


What It Means to Be A Monster

by sxstarscream



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)
Genre: F/M, Multi, future smut, mostly going to be Jill/Wesker with references to Jill/Chris, will update
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-26
Updated: 2015-12-31
Packaged: 2018-04-06 05:41:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 34,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4210080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sxstarscream/pseuds/sxstarscream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jill has been Chris's partner ever since the very beginning, but when the pair encounter an old enemy, their lives get changed forever.<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I'm still not sure what I'm doing with this, but I have a load of ideas. I'm going to try and be as close to canon as possible based on what we know about timelines and things like that, but if I need to change little things here and there I won't hesitate to do so.  
> I had this posted on FF.net, but I'm re-reading, editing, and touching up the chapters, so on the off chance any of you read them there, they may be a liiiiitle different. But not too much, I like what I've done so far.

_"And the tears come streaming down your face_  
When you lose something you can't replace  
When you love someone, but it goes to waste  
Could it be worse?" 

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The grass was damp under Chris Redfield's feet as he walked across the cemetery. It was drizzling lightly, and the drops of water were cool against his skin. Exactly one year to the day had passed since the last time he walked this grass. Coincidence was never something the soldier believed in, but on that day one year it ago it had been raining. Why did it always seem to be raining for these things. One year exactly since he had stood in a tight new suit, with his hands behind his back. The fact wasn't that he had purposely ignored coming here; the fact was he was just afraid. Afraid that coming here was accepting that she was dead and he couldn't do that. There wasn't a single part of him that would ever truly be able to do that.

He passed row after row of headstones, all varying heights and shades of grey stone. The path was made of lose pebbles and dirt, which had puddles every few steps due to the drizzle. Despite only having been here once he knew exactly where he was going,remembering every step - every thought he'd had that day. Chris was not allowing any thoughts to invade the inner silence he had created for himself. The walk continued until he got to the small divide in the path causing him to hesitate. He paused and sighed to himself, reaching up and wiping the rain drops from his forehead with the back of his hand. It was a cool, damp day and the sky was a murky grey with thick ominous clouds threatening a never ending drizzle of water. A light wind rustled the leaves in the trees and brushed through Chris's hair causing him to squint his blue eyes as the wind blew the rainy drizzle into them. Taking a breath he walked forwards,going down the path a short ways then veering off of it and walking through the grass, taking care not to tread on any graves. He was dressed in civilian clothing; dark grey jeans, and a white t-shirt that clung to his chest and arms. Though it was breezy, he was without a jacket. He could barely even feel the cold.  
  
He looked down at some of the other headstones as he walked reading the names and dates on them. Most were well kept with flowers and ribbons adorning the stone. One headstone had a wine glass in front of it, another, a bouquet of roses, long since dead. For some inexplicable reason, seeing these tokens of love made a wave of sadness overcome Chris. He looked away and drew a shaky breath. Regret tugged at the edge of his mind for not making the trip to the floral shop, as though without fresh flowers in his hand or a token of love, he wasn't welcome here. He shook the thoughts from his mind as the rows of headstones ended. The reason for the long walk lay just ahead of him.  
  
Her stone was in the middle of a small clearing. A small cherry tree with bright pink leaves grew off to the side. Sitting beside the tree and clear of any weeds, the grass well kept and cared for. The memory of this place was vivid when he had seen it exactly a year ago. His thoughts had been vaguely how beautiful it was; that she would have loved it. people dressed in black and turning to look at him with looks of deepest sympathy and sorrow upon their faces.  
  
A pause at the edge of the clearing. He stared, hard, at the single gravestone, clenching his teeth together. Chris remembered the day, exactly one year ago, when he had attended the funeral of his partner Jill Valentine.  
  
Slowly drawing a quivering breath, Chris took a few steps forward and thankful he was by himself. Walking through the parted aisle of people had been too much to bear. His shoes sunk into the damp grass, a sweet scent greeting him from the tree. A breeze went by rustling his hair, as he came to a stop just in front of the headstone. Crouching down and kneeling in the grass tenderly, his brows furrowed together and he reached forward tracing his fingers over the engraved letters.

 **In Loving Memory**  
Jillian Valentine  
1974 - 2006

Chris' chin quivered, and he tightened his jaw refusing to give in to the emptiness he felt; the refusal to believe she was gone. They had never found her body. A three month search had been put in place after the incident at the Spencer Estate, and even after they failed to find a single trace of her Chris had refused to stop looking. He would never stop looking; not until he had gotten an answer. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the dog-tag he had kept for so long. Looking down at it, he saw his own face reflected in the silver surface. B.S.A.A. was engraved on the front. Turning the small necklace over in his hand, touching his thumb over 'Valentine' engraved on the back. Hearing her voice vaguely in his mind, taking him back to that night...  
  
'...crap, the stupid chain broke. Here, can you keep this in your pocket...'  
  
...remembered her handing it to him. This was before they had even arrived at the mansion. Of course she had thought everything would be alright; so had he. How could they have known... Chris closed his eyes and saw a flash. Remembered pain; remembered being lifted off the ground, knowing what was coming. Remembered struggling and hearing her cry out, "No!". Remembered being dropped; the sound of glass shattering, of wind and rain. Everything after that was a blur; his frantic yelling, running back to the door, leaving the estate, struggling against the wind and rain, calling her name, praying that somehow, someway she had survived. How the rescue team had begun with such urgency, and how as the months had gone on, that urgency had ebbed into nothing. He opened his eyes, looking from the dog-tag to the headstone. Gently and carefully, he reached out and pushed the dirt aside at the stone's base, placing the tag down. With forced strength, he looked up at the stone again. Everyone had given up on her. How easy it was for them all to just accept that she was gone. Chris didn't. Chris _wouldn't_. Not on Jill; he would never give up on Jill. She was his partner, and his closest friend. She was everything to him, and he knew he would never stop until the day he died. He would never stop looking for her, not ever.  
  
"You aren't dead, Jill. I know you aren't." Chris said softly, touching his fingers to the engraving once again. His heart skipped a painful beat, and it felt as though his lungs were constricting. "I would feel it if you were really gone. And I can feel that you aren't dead." He felt warm tears form in his eyes, and clenched his teeth together to hold them back. Crying meant she was gone for good, and that was not the case. He closed his eyes, forcing the tears back.  
  
"You're just lost. And I swear, I will find you. I'll bring you back to me, Jill. I promise."


	2. Calm Before the Storm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just covering Lost in Nightmares stuff...I'm a sucker for accuracy.

The huge mansion loomed overhead as Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine approached the main doors, guns drawn and senses on high alert. They had arrived in Europe one week prior, bags packed with weapons, ammo, health supplies and defensive tools bracing themselves for the worst. They had been specially assigned this mission, by the order of the BSAA: European division to question and apprehend Oswell E. Spencer, one of the founders and creators of the infamous Umbrella Corporation. Ultimately they had viewed this as the perfect opportunity to pursue a small mission of their own. Chris and Jill knew that wherever Spencer was, Wesker was sure to be close behind. Chris especially suspected that Spencer would be able to give them some information that would lead him to Wesker, the one man he would never stop hunting. The duo walked side by side fairly relaxed, but guns still at the ready. If there was anything they had learned about dealing with anyone associated with Umbrella, it was to never completely let your guard down. Chris, tall and brawny, was dressed in tactical gear with his vest equipped with handgun ammo, a first aid spray and his knife covering his grayish shirt with its sleeves pushed above his elbows and BSAA patches on his biceps. He had his ear piece in to communicate with HQ, but his walkie-talkie still rested on his belt, just in case he got separated from Jill. No matter how Chris dressed his combat gear, there were things that stuck in his head from a previous life; never put the knife somewhere you can sit on it, zippers take too long but snaps open too easily so always go with Velcro, just pack what you need. All things he had been taught many years ago by someone who Chris wanted so desperately to forget, but so desperately needed to find.

Jill kept a minimal distance between the two, but remained near enough to reach him if needed. She was cautious and always ready to step to the defense of her partner. Dressed identically to Chris, Jill stick with the blue tactical outfit she had always been comfortable in. Equipped with the sprays and bullets Chris had, she had her earpiece and walkie-talkie at the ready, a blue cap pulled over her brown hair which was tied back with her few stray bang pieces pushed to the side. Her boots made almost no noise as they moved closer, only the occasional splash as they moved through puddles and dips in the road. Despite the fact that they were about to face god knows what in the one place Chris had always dreaded going to, he couldn't help but steal a glance at Jill. He watched as she approached, probably thinking about everything that lay ahead of them, and allowed a small smile to pass over his features. No matter how much he tried to focus on their work, he could never stop himself from taking in just how beautiful Jill Valentine really was. A strange creaking from the mansion brought him back to the present and the smile quickly vanished.

As they took cautious, but efficient steps towards the mansion looming overhead, a flash of lightening lit up the entire area, briefly giving Chris and Jill a clear flash of their surroundings. It looked even creepier in that flash of light than it ever had in the darkness. Jill froze in mid step, despite the chill in the air and the instinct to keep moving. Her grey eyes took in the building and she felt something inside of her – a dropping in the pit of her stomach.

"Everything's going to change."

"What?" Chris paused and turned to face her, squinting in the dark to make out her face. He was unnerved by his partner's behaviour, usually so calm and collected, Jill was showing a sign of...panic? Her face was definitely not as neutral as she usually maintained. If he didn't know any better Chris would almost have said she was afraid.

"Jill, what is it?" Her gun was held partially out in front of her, and the dim lights of the house illuminated her pale face. Jill Valentine was a woman who had been through her share of trauma and horror, and Chris knew she was not one to be easily intimidated. From what he'd heard from her about Raccoon City... well, it was hard for him to imagine her letting anything getting to her.

Jill clenched her jaw and swallowed hard. _What's wrong with you, you're just questioning Spencer, that's it._ She shook the thoughts away before forcing a small smile on her face. "Nothing, it's nothing. I just...expected more." She said, nodding slightly at their vacant surroundings. A shiver went through her again and she had to force the worry away. "Come on."

Another bright flash of lightening illuminated the pair's ominous surroundings. The mansion hung over them like a dark castle from a black and white movie. It was really something out of a nightmare, or maybe even was a nightmare itself. If one thing was for sure it was that this was not going to be easy and it was not going to be fun. Chris and Jill were almost to the door now. Walking up to the large entry way, the bushes and plants and grown over the gardens and blew in the wind, the dead trees creaking eerily. Colonnades framed the door, with two on both sides and two more above it. The mansion for all intents and purposes appeared abandoned, but they knew better. Chris frowned as his eyes moved over the dozens of smashed and filthy windows, tense at the thought that he would see a face in one of them. He tightened his grip on his gun and kept moving forwards. As they got closer still they raised their guns, holding them pointed in front of them and ready to shoot at anything that moved. They had been expecting to encounter someone...anyone by now. The silence and emptiness did not comfort them, quite the contrary; it had put both of them on edge.

"Where are all the guards?" Jill asked nervously. Her eyes were skipping back and forth over the windows, her gun aimed firmly at the door. If there was anything she had learned through the years, it was that a calm silence when you least expect it is never a good thing.

"I don't know, but I have a bad feeling about this." Chris said glumly.

"Let's just keep moving."

The pair climbed the small set of steps leading up to the grand double doors, as quietly as they could. Once they had their backs against the door it became clear that nothing was going to immediately attack them. Chris nodded to Jill and she returned it, holstering her gun and pulling out a lock pick for the door. As skilled as ever, Jill had never lost her touch. Chris stood by on watch, ready to protect her from anything that might attack her as she worked. After another few moments went by, it became clear that no alarm system was being tripped and that whoever was supposed to be guarding the door was either preoccupied... or dead. Chris dropped his gun to his side and raised his hand to his headpiece.

"Chris to HQ, come in. We're at the target's location." He needed to check in, let them know they were safe and that they'd arrived in one piece.

"Copy that Chris, move in and procure the target." The voice was crackly with static; reception was definitely not top here.

"Roger that."

"What can you tell us about the area?" Jill asked from her kneeling position. She had been listening in while she worked and wanted to know more about why it was so quiet. Maybe HQ could tell them something that would ease the tension, or at least help to dispel the fear.

"A satellite scan isn't showing anything out of the ordinary, but regardless... you should expect the unexpected."

If there was anything the two of them had learned, it was just that. Jill nodded silently in agreement. _I hear that._ She thought.

"Understood." The lock was beginning to feel looser beneath her hands. With a click it released, and the brief moment of calm was gone. Chris turned off the communication with HQ and held his gun out, once again aiming it at the door. Pocketing the lock pick and taking out her gun once again, Jill moved to the side to let Chris lead the way. Chris put his hand on the door and looked uneasily at Jill.

She looked right back, and held her breath, before nodding. "We're in."

"Let's move." Chris said, without another pause. Despite the confidence in his voice, his nerves were still fighting him. He turned the door handle, and shouldered in the door, charging into the entryway, his gun at the ready.

Jill raised her gun in front of her and took her move, taking a few cautious steps towards the open door. Not hearing any signs of distress from Chris, she let out a small breath of relief. She turned her back to the doorway, and looked around back the way they had come. She paused staring out at the dark driveway, the wind moving the trees and plants and nothing, not even crickets, disturbed the silence. She felt a nervous tug at the corner of her mind. Something inside of her knew...knew that after tonight, nothing would be the same for Jill Valentine; not ever.


	3. A Meeting of Minds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One of my faaaaaavourite scenes, more on the way very soon.

There had been a surprising number of guards in the mansion, at least compared to how Albert Wesker remembered it. Judging their reaction to his arrival he had not been expected. For years... _years _, Spencer had managed to stay completely off the maps. The first to die had been the ones guarding the driveway, and then he took care of the ones lining the roadway, disposing of the bodies in the shrubs. He couldn't take any risks if _they___ showed up; if tonight was to be the end, he wanted everything to go smoothly. He was going to kill Jill Valentine and Chris Redfield once and for all.  
The guards throughout the house had been disposed of effortlessly. Their bullets, their tasers... did nothing to Wesker. He dodged them and took out the ones who had fired before the bullets had stopped flying. Blood was everywhere and over everything. It was an absolute massacre; a massacre of one. Wesker knew there were more than just men guarding the mansion, but he saw no reason to take the long way around. He killed the humans, all but the one, and left the nightmares that lurked in the darker parts of the house. _Oh, and they will suffer those nightmares._ Wesker knew the layout of the house as if it were imprinted on his mind, and though he hadn't been there in years, the layout was exactly the same. As he had gone through the double doors at the top of the stairs in the mansions main hall, he had ensured that the BSAA pair would not be able to get to him that easily. Seeing the security control box he had destroyed it by punching a hole through it.

The upstairs hallway was absolutely silent. By know, the old man would know. If nothing else...if not from the screaming of his servants or the disruption in the security system, he would feel it. He would feel it because _Wesker_ could feel it. His footsteps along the carpeted floor were silent and he made no more noise than a shadow as he moved along. Reaching the grand double doors and paused, knowing that by now Chris and Jill would be at least approaching the mansion if not already at the door. He did not have very long to do what he'd come for, so he waited just another brief moment, before placing a gloved hand on one of the doors and gently pushed it open.

The large room was almost completely dark, lit only by some lanterns and candles mounted on the pillars around the room. A large, empty marble floor shone in moonlight and lightning flashes which came from the three large, paneled windows taking up most of the wall opposite the grand double doors. From this room, Spencer could overlook the mountains and valleys and forests which surrounded his mansion. On the other three walls were enormous bookshelves and glass cases, all of which held volume after volume of scientific works. Mostly they were about Umbrella and about Spencer's work, but some were important. Some held secrets that even Wesker did not know about. From behind his shades, Wesker's eyes moved over the room. Their target sat in a wheelchair, his back to one of the huge paneled windows. Old and frail, Spencer was hooked up to several machines all of which were assisting in keeping him alive. He was clad in a robe and slippers. His thinning, white hair was slicked back and his breathing, though monitored, was calm.

"I always knew you'd come." His voice was soft, but strong, and it echoed throughout the room. "I knew you'd come crawling back to me, eventually."

Wesker felt a tension throughout his body, an uneasy sort of feeling he could never seem to shake. It was something that no matter how apathetic Wesker thought himself to be, that he could never completely get rid of. He was only ever able to push it aside and pretend that it wasn't there. Some weeks he spent days awake with no rest, contemplating what this feeling was. A tightness, an anxiety that always made Wesker feel...almost _human_ again. As if he needed to do something. He knew it had something to do with Spencer, he had always suspected it but had never had any solid evidence to support his theory.

"Spencer." Wesker's cold voice was much louder and much more forceful than Spencer. He was filled with anger; hatred. He had had enough of this old man but before he killed him, before he ended the misery and pain that Spencer had brought upon his life, Wesker was going to get the answers he deserved.

"My child." The old man spoke the words of a father, but the coldness in his voice took away notion that that was how he saw Wesker. Spencer studied him as he would an experiment.

"I've to come know the truth. And you are going to tell me." Wesker's slight accent clear as he spoke slowly to Spencer. He took a few steps closer to Spencer, further out into the open space. A flash of lightening lit up the entire room briefly in shades of grey, before letting the candles continue their flickering glow.

"You are going to tell me everything."

\----------------------------------------------------------------------

The door of the mansion closed shut behind Jill as she joined Chris in the entrance hall. It was deserted and creepy, and a strange smell hung in the air. Chris and Jill took two cautious steps forwards. In front of them was a grand staircase which branched off on either side, both sides leading up to the second story, all of which was an open balcony-like floor. A giant chandelier hung, unlit over the room. The marble floor curved around the back of the staircase, where there was probably a door to more rooms. To their left and right were large, polished wooden doors each with intricate carvings on them. The pair stood in absolute silence for several moments, guns at the ready in front of them, listening for any signs of life. They heard and saw none.

Deciding for the most part that the place was safe, Chris took a slow step forward his foot slipping slightly on something. Taking a step back and looking down, he gasped slightly. Jill looked at the floor and took a breath, tensing up and feeling her heart rate pick up slightly. There was a large, red smear across the center of the floor, the strong coppery smell told the two that it was blood. It was still shiny in the candle light, and Jill looked around even more carefully. Whatever had happened, hadn't happened too long ago. Chris realized this too, and became all the more weary.

"Those look locked." Chris said, nodding to the two large doors off to their right and left. Jill's eyes moved to the stair case and followed the balcony around the room to two doors which were directly over each of the two on their floor. Her eyes moved back down the stairs, to the hallway on either side. She turned to Chris and nodded in that direction. Chris nodded, understanding that she wanted to go that way.

They moved down the left corridor, going under the archway and down to small sets of stairs, until they were in a small sort of doorway. A single light hung here, illuminating the enclosed area. Against the wall that was to their right, was a lever. In front of them was a sort of block on the wall, in the center of which was a hole intended for a crank. To the left was another, darker hallway which went down someways and then looked as if it dropped off. Chris and Jill both sincerely hoped that they would not have to go down there, but a horrible nagging feeling made them just know that they would.

Chris investigated the crank device a bit more, figuring out that if they needed to go down the dark hallway to their left, they'd need to find the crank that fit there.

"What is it with this guy and cranks?" Chris asked Jill with a sigh.

"He's a man of refined tastes." Jill said, a smile in her voice. If nothing else, she loved to tease her partner.

"He's obsessed, that's what he is." A serious tone still in Chris's voice. He loved his partner, but this was no time to joke around. They'd come for information and Chris was going to do anything he had to in order to get it. He turned back to face the lever in the wall. Moving towards it and placing a gloved hand on it, he pulled it down and released it. A loud clicking was heard from outwards and above them, echoing around the empty mansion, signaling that a lock had been released. Jill cringed, although by now anyone who may have been around was either hiding or didn't want them to be aware of their presence.

The pair went out the other hallway, back into the main area they had just come from. Figuring that since the clicking had come from above them, that whatever locked they'd just opened must be up there. They went towards the staircase and began moving up the blood streaked stairs one at a time. As they got halfway, another flash of lightening lit up the area and a body fell from the balcony above. Gasping, Jill and Chris moved back several steps, their hearts pounding, but the body showed no signs of life at all as it thudded against the steps and rolled down several of them. Chris looked up at Jill, still breathing hard from the slight shock, and she nodded to him. Chris put his finger to the device in his ear.

"Eagle 6 to nest, do you read?" He said, the nervousness in his voice showing through.

"We read you Eagle 6, go ahead."

"We found some men down." Chris and Jill had moved up the rest of the stairs and were on the second floor landing. Up here were two gates on either side of the stairs, and beyond them the bodies of at least half a dozen men slouched against the walls and lying on the floors, blood everywhere. Each one had a horrible looking wound in their chests, as if they'd been impaled with the same object. What in the hell could have done all this? "Judging by their wounds, it looks like they were physically assaulted. I figure they're probably Spencer's security. Lord only knows what killed them."

"Roger that." Came the crackled response. The lightening was certainly taking its toll on clear communications. "We knew this mission wouldn't be a cake walk. Use extreme caution."

Chris and Jill moved to a large doorway in front of them, which appeared to lead to the rest of the house. The bodies were thick here, and not a single one moved. There was hardly a smell, which meant the bodies were fresh. Chris moved to the doorway and pushed. It didn't budge. Looking around, he saw a small panel on the wall. Jill moved to it and stooped slightly to investigate.

"It's been disabled." She straightened and looked at the very solid looking door. "However we're going to get to Spencer, it won't be through here."

Chris sighed again, and turned to look at the doorways leading down either side of this main door. "Nothing's ever easy, is it?"

"We'll have to go through the mansion, anyway we can." Jill said.

Guns in front of them, Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine went to explore the rest of this god forsaken place, fully prepared to become lost in this nightmare.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------

Wesker was pacing. It was a habit he had picked up long ago, and something he did when he was desperately trying to remain calm and ignore the twitching muscle in his jaw. His face betrayed no emotion to Spencer, providing no reaction to what he was being told. His hands were folded behind his back as he moved, another habit he had picked up when he was trying his hardest not to prematurely murder the object of his interrogation.

"The Progenitor Virus was everything I had wanted. It was my past, my present and my future. It would have been the key to everything." Spencer laughed; a weak sound that cracked and turned into a hacking cough. A dull grin spread across the old man's face, making the wrinkles in his face much more pronounced. "And it was. It _is_. I was going to use it to my advantage, to create the only thing I'd ever wanted."

Spencer was explaining everything; everything that Wesker had never known the answers to, and everything that he had never been able to learn about through his years of painstaking research. Wesker listened in silence as Spencer told him about the origins of it all; of his plans. It didn't take much for him to figure out what Spencer had said. Through this new knowledge, a horrible truth was sinking in and settling in Wesker's mind. Something he'd always suspected but never thought could actually be true. Wesker was learning the truth about his creation.

"A new superior breed of humans, given birth by the progenitor virus." The old man paused, coughing slightly and catching his breath. Wesker paced the wheelchair, hands by his sides, clenching into fists and then releasing again. His heart was doing a strange, skipping pulse, and the tension through his body was tightening. "The Wesker children...were entrusted with endless potential. Of them, only one survived; you."

Spencer felt a bitterness inside of him that he'd always felt when he thought about his children. The Wesker children were supposed to have been everything. They were have supposed to spread the way for his new, perfect world. They had been weak; they had all died, all except Albert. The one who was planning to kill him.

Wesker had made his way over to one of the large windows. He stood, the muscle in his jaw clenching and unclenching, the force of what Spencer had just said hitting him like a wave, and with that wave came an anger so intense that it flooded him and made him want to rip the old man limb from limb.

"Are you saying I was manufactured?" Wesker said, his voice its usually cold, emotionless tone. Spencer felt the bitterness spread. What could this rejection know? How could he possibly understand what a waste of time it all was. Spencer gripped the arms of the wheel chair and bent forward, a wave of sickness coming over him.

"I was to become a god." His voice shook with anger. He coughed several times, his heart beating weakly in his chest. "Creating a new world, with an advanced race of human beings. However, all was lost with Raccoon City."

By the window fury was flooding through Wesker. It was like a beating drum, pulsing through him so forcefully it was all he could do to control it. His hands clenched into tight fists by his side, the force of it making the muscles through his arm grow tight beneath his clothing. His jaw was tight, and he could feel a dull throb in his temple. He took a deep and steadying his breath, and rose his head in his moment of clarity. A flash of lightening illuminated him entirely, the reds of his eyes burning with his anger, fading to a dull glow once the light outside had faded.

"Despite that setback, your creation still holds great significance." He coughed again, his heart missing several beats, his lungs trying feebly to get in all the air they could. "Now... my candle burns dimly." He grunted as he pushed himself to his feet. Putting his hand to his aching back he took a step from the wheelchair. Wesker had turned from the window and took several steps towards Spencer, his intent burning clearly in his mind.

"Ironic, isn't it? For one who has the right to be a god." Spencer spat. It wasn't fair, none of it. That he be so sick, when it was he who had come up with the perfect formula to live and to be invincible. He took a breath, then began to turn to face his remaining child. "To face his own mortality." He finished weakly. He had to look up in order to meet Wesker's eyes. He was so much taller than Spencer, and stronger. Spencer breathed weakly, looking at his creation before him. Regardless of the failures he had suffered, Spencer had always been somewhat proud of Albert. He had endured.

Wesker looked down at Spencer, his head held high. This pathetic old man, who thought so much as to think himself a deity, seemed so pathetic to Wesker. He finally understood everything. He finally realized how stupid he was to have ever been scared of this man.

"The right to be a god." Wesker spoke Spencer's words and paused. The fury came so quickly that it took him over entirely. Quicker than Spencer could realize, Wesker drew back his right hand and drove it faster than a bullet through the old man's chest, driving it clear through to the other side. Blood flew out of the wound, and the Spencer let out a gasp which soon turned into a gurgle. Blood filled his throat and mouth and trickled out of his mouth. The pain was unbearable, and Spencer immediately felt all the life leaving his body.

With Wesker's free hand, he grabbed Spencer's shoulder and pulled him close, driving his right arm further and deeper into the old man. He moved his head closer to the pathetic dying figure's, having proved just how weak and pathetic he truly was.

"That right is now mine." Wesker said with such finality that it a sense of power surged through his veins. He withdrew his arm with as much force as he had inserted it, and with a last rattling gasp, the old man fell to his knees, his hand grasping numbly where Wesker's had just been. The shock of it was keeping some of the pain at bay; some... but nowhere near enough to quell the weakness that moved through him. He fell backwards, his arm hitting a step, and his body rolled down the remaining three stairs, dead before he hit the floor.

"The right to be a god?" Wesker said to the dead man as he took a few steps forwards to look down at his handy work. "You? Arrogant even until the end. Only one truly capable of being a god deserves that right." He said. These words settled within him, and a feeling of great calm came over him. The tension was gone. Any feeling of anxiety, fear, uneasiness...all gone. He took one last look down at the old man, feeble and broken, and turned his back on him. He walked back over to the window and looked outside. The weather was actually quite fitting to this night, he thought.

All that's left to be done is to rid myself of Redfield and his annoying partner. Then I will be completely free. At last.


	4. The Unknown Goodbye

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> LiN.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter looooooong af but i just wanna get past all the Lost in Nightmares stuff and get to original content.

The mansion was like a maze, and the pair didn't let their guard down for a second. Continuously passing corpses in the upper main hallway did nothing to calm their nerves and pounding hearts. The creaks and groans of the old mansion made it even worse. After trying both doors on the main floor to the left and right of the grand front doors, the assumption that they were locked proved to be correct. The pair had grimly resigned to trying the upstairs doors, Chris knowing that the only thing they were going to find was the lever that led to basement. He couldn't even begin to imagine what was down there.

The first winding corridor had led them to a bedroom, which Jill had suggested belonged to Spencer himself as it was the only room so far to appear to have had any real use. Chris hadn't thought they could be that luck, instead suggesting that maybe it was the room of the guards' captain, or perhaps a scientist or doctor. Every corner they came to was an ordeal in itself, Chris edging forwards and swinging his gun to affirm nothing was hidden and lying in wait.

Jill's sense of foreboding had grown steadily worse, though she kept a calm demeanor; she didn't want to give Chris the extra worry about her, and she knew he would. He always worried about her. While Chris played the soldier, Jill had time to observe the walls around them. This place was old, that was for certain, and Spencer didn't appear to be diligent about his housekeeping. While tidy, organized and relatively free of clutter, the mansion was still dusty. The old wallpaper was peeling and water stained the corners. The old, decorative plates and photographs were covered in layers of grime. Pictures of Spencer watched them moving from their homes behind dusty panes of glass. Jill had that unnerving sense that the eyes moved wherever they went.

Having found nothing but some old hand written books in the bedroom, they left and moved back to the main entrance, walking across a carpeted pathway to the door on the opposite side of the room. A flash of lightening brought a sudden memory to Jill; groaning and gun shots, nothing but fear and adrenaline keeping her going.

"Kinda takes you back, doesn't it?" She asked quietly. Her grey eyes turned to look at Chris, and she saw his eyebrows draw together. Regret pulled at her, and she felt bad for hinting at what she had.

"To Raccoon City?" His eyes turned to meet hers, questioning, and she nodded once, trying to look apologetic. Everything that had happened, all he had been through…she knew how hard it was for him to think back on it. _But it made you stronger._ She thought. _Better._

"Unfortunately, yeah." Chris said in agreement, his eyes moving back to what was ahead of them, making sure nothing blocked their way over to the next doorway. "That's where all this started."

"Hard to believe that was eight years ago." She sighed. "I guess I am getting older."

"You're not the only one." Chris said, the ghost of a smile on his face. For a second, just a second, Jill saw the boy she had met, way back in S.T.A.R.S.; stubborn and resistant, strong willed, but good hearted, remembering how she had admired the way he stood up to Wesker when he had bullied Chris. How long ago that was now, and how different their lives were. Sometimes she wondered how they had made it this far. When they reached the opposite side, they came to a break in the floor where the old material had given way. Chris and Jill looked at each other and gave a grim nod. While Chris knelt and flattened his hands in front of him, Jill took several steps backwards, all the while calculating the distance in her mind. She took a breath and ran at Chris, counting each foot fall before stepping on Chris's outstretched hands and launching herself over the gap, tucking and rolling a perfect landing on the other side. Pride swelled in her chest as she turned to nod at Chris.

"I'll go unlock the door downstairs." She said, slipping through the doorway, praying there would be an easy way down. Chris ran back down the central staircase. Once Jill had unlocked the doorway, the pair explored what turned out to be an old dining room, and after practicing an almost forgotten musical talent, Chris and Jill returned to the single light in front of the hole in the wall.

Once Chris had run under while Jill turned the crank they had reunited, turned and walked the remaining short distance down the dungeon-like hallway, until they reached a metal doorway illuminated by a single naked bulb. Pushing through, they followed down another short hallway until they came to a drop. Chris cautiously stuck his head over and saw it was only about a six foot drop. He crouched, and leaped down, landing in a puddle, and checking his surroundings, before Jill dropped down beside him.

"What is that smell?" Jill asked in disgust. Chris inhaled and had to restrain himself from gagging. It was a smell that reminded him of one he had smelled before, and it had come from things Chris had hoped he would never have to deal with again.

"Dunno, but I hope we don't run into whatever's making it" He said, knowing full well they had been forced to come down this way for a reason. It was all Jill could do to stop from snorting.

"And when have we ever been that lucky?"

The joking and idle chatter came to a stop the moment the pair got only a few feet into the dungeon like basement. The corridors were long and dirty, rust covering the barred cells to their left and right. Dried and frail looking corpses lay scattered, leaning against walls and lying face down on the ground. Rats nibbled at their flesh, and squeaked, running away from the living, breathing partners now descending further into this hell. Chris's eyes moved cautiously down the hallway, and up onto the balcony above them. He had the horrible feeling that he and Jill were not alone down here, and he dreaded meeting whatever lurked out of sight. Jill was braced for anything, gun at the ready, and uneasy about the stench which grew stronger as they moved.

"I have a bad feeling about this place." Jill said quietly. The chains that hung from the ceiling clinked against each other, and rattled slightly in the breeze. A rat ran by her feet and a musky stench ran by with it.

"Me too. Keep close." Chris said, nodding in grim agreement. They began down a second hallway, when something moved on the walkway above them. Chris reached out and grabbed Jill's arm, yanking her into one of the open cells, heart slamming against his chest. They stood, still as statues, their eyes pinned on the ground for a shadow, their ears listening to the drag of its chains.

"What the hell was that?" Jill whispered.

"Let's not find out." Chris whispered back, their voices hardly audible. Several minutes later, the pair had found they had no choice but to move up where that thing had just been, but the corridor was empty.

"Where did it go?" Chris asked, looking around. "I don't hear it."

"Let's not find out." Jill said, echoing his earlier words. The pair continued moving through the dungeon, their fear increased now that they had caught a glimpse of one of the guardians. They moved down another set of stairs and came to a short, dark hallway, blocked off at the end by fallen rubble. Chris sighed, "Guess we'll have to find a different way though." but Jill had frozen. She heard a muffled grunting, and what sounded like something being dragged across the floor. Chris seemed to have heard it to because he froze, and turned slightly facing down the hallway.

A spiked hammer broke through the blocked off wall, and the guardian pushed its way through. It was huge, and the smell that came with it was unbearable. It wore a cloth over itself, and had a large hood covering what was sure to be a grotesque face.

"Chris, this way!" Jill ran down a small hallway, the thing rounding the corner they had just come from. They cut back across and ran through the hole in the wall, guns ahead of them and hearts pounding. Running down another winding hallway, they got to a room with a ladder in the middle, leading up to a doorway. Looking behind them and seeing the thing coming after them, Jill scurried up the ladder, Chris pulling himself up quickly behind her. They ran through the doorway and slammed it behind them.

Panting, they stood in yet another gloomy, smelly hallway. They couldn't help but look at one another and grin.

"Duck and run; my favourite tactic." Jill said with a smirk, and Chris held back a laugh. It was one of the things he really liked about her; she never let anything get to her too much. Chris started walking ahead of her, not letting the moment of happiness distract him from the issue at hand. He was getting annoyed at this nonsense, and wanted nothing more than to bully the information out of Spencer, apprehend him and get on their way.

Suddenly Jill felt the ground go from beneath her feet, and it was all she could do not to scream. She landed on her side, ducked and rolled down until she came to a stop in murky water. Jumping to her feet, her hands grasped at her utility belt and pack, realizing with mute horror that they were gone. She bent and felt around in the water around her, but her search brought her no relief. Hearing a crackle, and she realized with some hope that her walkie hadn't been destroyed.

"Jill, are you okay?" Chris's voice was fuzzy, but audible, and she felt a wave of relief hearing his voice.

"I'm fine." She said, keeping her voice low, but sighing with relief. She didn't feel safe here, and now that Chris wasn't with her, she felt overcome with vulnerability. "But I lost most of my gear."

"Same here." He said after a moment. "Alright. Try to find a way out of there and I'll find a way to meet up with you."

"Copy that." She said, with professional courtesy. "Watch your back."

"You too." The walkie crackled off. Jill walked cautiously down a small hallway, crouching to look through the barred lower wall. . Listening to be sure nothing was nearby, she crept over to a crate and lifted the lid, the inside revealing a blue tinted triangle. It was a shard of rock, and Jill studied it's broken off edges. It was cut too evenly to be an accident; this had been placed in that chest for a reason. She pocketed the item and crept off.

_He said he'll find me. He always finds me._

Chains shook to her right, and the brunette froze, shivering from the cold, damp clothing, feeling vulnerable with no weapon. They sounded as if they were getting closer, and she took several steps backwards and a hand snaked around her mouth. Her heart leapt out of its chest, but she turned around, Chris had a finger to his lips, and her heart once again settled. The pair backed into a dark corner, Jill's back pressed against Chris's chest. She couldn't help but feel warmth at his closeness. _Now is not the time._ She thought, sternly.

The decaying monster walked by down the hallway, dragging its large, hooked hammer behind it and oblivious to the pair hiding. Jill felt Chris's heart hammering in his chest.

"We have no weapons." She said fearfully.

"I didn't see any easy way out." Chris's voice was low, but he was managing to keep calmness in his tones. "The whole room is all half built walls and ladders and empty crates. It has a large, solid stone corridor in the middle, blocked by a barred gate. It could be a way out, but there's only a ladder on the other side."

"Is it accessible, this corridor?" She asked, her fingers touching the hard shard in her pocket. She looked up at Chris who frowned.

"As long as that thing doesn't come by, yes." He looked pensive. "There was another crank too..." They shared a look.

"And a puzzle?" Jill asked, pulling the piece out. Chris's mouth drew in a hard line. "We'll have to be fast about it."

Chris took her to the centerpiece; it truly was a large corridor, blocked off by a heavy looking barred doorway. Jill looked all around it's edges, and saw that the whole thing could be lifted up. How safe that was, she didn't know. Her eyes followed the wall's edge down until they fell upon a crank.

Jill's eyes found the puzzle box just as they heard the echo of chains from far off to their left. She moved quietly through the filthy water over to it and gently slid in its missing piece. A resounding click echoed off the dungeon's walls, and the duo froze.

"Try it now." She said, confidence in her voice. Chris regarded her with a look of admiration, one which he frequently gave her. She couldn't help the smile. "Hurry!" The thought of the roaming creature wiped the smile off her face as quickly as it had come. 

Chris placed both of his strong hands on the crank and leaned against, putting considerably more effort into it now. Jill saw another crank inside, meant to open the door from the inside out. 

"Chris!" Jill shouted, as the door dropped down with a bang behind her. Chris had released the crank. "I'll distract it, get the door open again!" His voice sounded much too far away and she felt a fear rising in her chest. I have to save him, I have to. She heard another loud smash of the hammer, and it shook her. She took a steadying breath, and put both hands on the crank, pushing down as hard as she could. 

Despite the heaviness of the door, her cranking began to make it rise, painfully slow, inch by inch. It was getting higher and higher, and finally Jill could see on the other side.

"Chris, it's open!" A moment went by, and then Chris appeared, running and splashing through the water, the hooded, decaying figure close behind him.

Jill released her hands and the crank spun wildly, the large, spiked door slamming down on top of the monster, causing it to let out a horrible shout, before a sickening crunch that echoed through the basement.

"You okay?" He was bent over, catching his breath, but he looked up at her when she asked him.

"Yeah. I've dealt with worse than that thing." He said with a small grin. Before them now, stood a ladder, leading up to what looked like a sewer top.

"Up and out, I guess." He said, looking at her. Trepidation of what awaited them filled Jill. As she started to climb, listening to Chris climbing up behind her, a dread filled her. She knew.

_The worst is yet to come._


	5. The Sound of Silence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bye Jill...

A heavy rusted grate lifted off of the ground, and out crawled a grimey, damp and dirty Jill Valentine. She moved quickly aside so that Chris could crawl out after her. Jill took a few moments to sit, panting to herself, relieved that they had managed to escape. Once Chris pulled himself out, he kicked the top back over the hole and leaned backwards against a wall.

"We must be towards the back of the place." Jill observed, looking around. The pair had emerged in a small alleyway that twisted around old brick walls. As they caught their breath, and rose to their feet, they realized it was silent. There were lights back here positioned every so often against the old stone, causing dark shadows to gather in corners. No more than a minute passed before they gave each other grim stares.

"Spencer has to be back here." Chris said, looking around. There was only one path, and it turned a corner and led away from the basement entrance. The pair moved forwards and around, where the wall broke off and there was a narrow, sheer drop. Chris leaned his head over, and saw that they were walking through an arched walkway, on the edge of a river being fed by a small waterfall. The water was pounding and rushing downwards and away from them, towards what he knew was the edge of the large cliff that the mansion sat atop of. They moved up stone steps, listening as hard as they could, and feeling vulnerable without any weapons. Chris, at least, still had his knife on his shoulder.

Lightening flashed in the distance, and a crack of thunder echoed around the stone walls. Large raindrops were starting to hit the ground making dark, wet splash marks. They rounded another corner at the top of the stairs and climbed a second set. Emerging in a roofed hallway, the walls were lined with high windows and more paintings. At the end of hallway, large red spatters of blood were on the wall, and three guardsmen lay dead on the ground the same terrible wounds in all three of their chests. The first body had a bloody face, lying on his back. They were cautious, maneuvered around him, and came across a second. He was slumped backwards against the wall, and in his lap sat a handgun. Chris stooped and picked it up, checking the clip.

"It wasn't fired." He said. The man had only managed to draw it before he was killed.

"There used to be a door." Jill said. The shattered remains of a doorway and splintered door lay on the ground. _That explains the sudden home like change._ She thought. Another slouched corpse against a wall had another gun, this one not fired either. Around the final corner a huge set of double doors stood open, revealing to the pair a carpeted hallway, decorated identically to the main room of the mansion. Jill's heart was pounding and tightness had wound its way into her chest. Chris studied her, and realized how uneasy she looked.

"It's alright." He said gently. He wanted nothing more than to reach out and touch her cheek, make her relax. She nodded, and began to make her way slowly down the hallway. It curved around in a large semi-circle, leading them both to a final, large set of wooden double doors, shut and undamaged. The only noise at all was their feet against the ground and the rumbles of thunder from outside. Chris looked to Jill, and nodded towards the door. She nodded in understanding, taking a good look at her partner. Jill was praying that this was going to be easy. They reached the door and turned their sides to it, facing one another. No sound at all came from the other side.

Maybe it's empty. Maybe he's gone. Jill's head momentarily filled with the relief of not finding Spencer. Their mission here would be useless, but at least they could go home. At least nothing would have happened to Chris.

Jill's eyes went to Chris, whose brows were creased, and was deep in concentration. He caught her eyes briefly, and nodded. In perfect sync, they rammed their arms into the door and stormed into the room, guns pointed dead ahead of them.

Spencer's body lay cold on the ground, but Jill and Chris could spare no time to react. A tall, broad figure stood in the window, and turned to look at the duo. It was a sight that sent a chill through Jill, and made Chris's hold his gun that much firmer.

A flash of lightening illuminated the entire room, and Albert Wesker turned, a smirk on his face, and eyes glowing like embers.

Jill's heart was hammering in her chest, and she allowed her eyes to skim over the body of Spencer, the hole in his chest identical to the ones on the guards outside. Chris's heart was frozen, and his whole body felt cold. This was not what was supposed to happen. He should not be here. Spencer was supposed to tell them where Wesker was, and then they were supposed to apprehend him. Spencer was not supposed to be dead.

Wesker spent no time wasted with idle talk, and began taking steps towards the pair. Jill was about to shoot, when three shots came from Chris beside her. She looked at her partner briefly, and saw a look of such unmoving determination that Jill knew he was not leaving until Wesker was dead. Chris had always been tight-lipped at the thought of Wesker, refusing to discuss anything but tactics on how to kill him. Years ago, when Wesker had betrayed S.T.A.R.S., Chris had been devastated. Jill had urged him gently for months afterwards, begging him to tell her why he was so torn up about it, but he never had. She had always had her theories and ideas, but when she had brought them up to him, he had gotten so angry that he hadn't spoken to her for a week. His refusal to discuss whatever he and Wesker had once shared had hurt her at first, but he had always included her in his plans to put a stop to him, and for that she had always felt forgiven.

Jill added two shots of her own to the three of Chris's now aimed dead at Wesker, and what their former captain did stunned Jill almost into immobility.

Wesker moved, first left, then right, dodging the bullets as if they were nothing. He seemed as though he were disappearing and reappearing again, each time closer to the pair, and each time without Jill ever seeing him properly move. Her heart was pounding in her chest, and Chris was doing all he could to keep his weapon trained at Wesker. When the blonde had dodged the last bullet, he crouched and pounced, taking three quick steps at Chris so fast he was no more than a blur. He grabbed Chris's arm, twisting it harshly, making him lose his grip on the gun and grunt in a mixture of surprise and pain. Wesker's fist swung down on Chris's cheek, and then he reappeared on Chris's right, elbowing him in the gut and turning in a final movement, up handing him on the jaw and sending him sailing backwards. He had moved so quickly that Jill didn't even think three seconds had gone by.

The moment he finished with Chris, Wesker whipped around and darted straight to Jill. Her heart leapt and her breathing was barely coming properly, but she focused enough to try three shots at him. He dodged them as easily as he had the first five bullets, ducked down and grabbed her, his fingers forming an iron grip around her throat and slamming her backwards against one of the firm, wooden pillars. As if from far away, she heard the sound of her weapon clattering to the floor, but the only thing she could do was grab uselessly at his arm. His fingers felt like iron around her throat, and her feet were dangling, uselessly. Her own fingers clawed pathetically at his sleeve, but to no avail. Black spots were appearing in her eyes and her lungs felt deflated. Jill heard, she could have sworn, Wesker let out a grunt of amusement.

From across the room, Chris had struggled to his feet, and saw Wesker strangling his partner. Rage filled him, and he charged across the room and swung his fist at Wesker, who dodged it effortlessly, dropping Jill. The brunette felt her legs hit the ground and she crumpled, her palms flat against the floor gasping for air, sucking every bit in she could. Her throat was pounding in pain, and Chris was furious. Again and again he swung at Wesker who dodged each one again and again, an infuriating smirk on his face all the while. Finally, Chris swung with his right hand and Wesker grabbed it, the same iron fist now squeezing on Chris's hand. He lowered his arm, and Chris let out another grunt of pain.

Wesker spun around, Chris's arm twisting painfully, causing him to double over to keep his elbow from snapping, when Wesker let go and landed a loaded punch to Chris's jaw again. This time, Chris had braced himself, and despite the throbbing in his cheek, whipped sideways, aiming a low kick at Wesker, who managed to swing his arm up to deflect it.

While Chris had been landing his attacks, Jill had regained her composure, and picked up her weapon. Rising to her feet and moving towards were the two men fought, she aimed three more shots directly at Wesker's head. Wesker's attack on Chris halted for a split second, and he shoved Chris roughly out of the way of the shots, a move that surprised both Jill and Chris.

_Nobody and nothing is going to hurt Chris but him._ Jill thought bitterly.

Wesker skidded out of the way of the next bullets, and this time Jill anticipated his lightening fast movements, the end of her gun never missing her target. Wesker never let her hit him, twisting in the air, the bullets whipping past above and below him, moving as if in slow motion for him.

He landed and faced Jill, whose gun clicked after the next shot. _Shit!_ She thought, but wasted no time in attacking him, tossing the emptied weapon aside and running towards him. Chris took advantage of the pause and attacked Wesker, again swinging a fist hard at him, and Wesker again blocking it. He pushed Chris out of the way just as Jill reached him, flipping her knife out of its pocket and stabbing forcefully at Wesker. Her former captain twisted her knife hand away from him as if it were nothing, and shoved his free hand into her stomach with so much force she flew backwards and slammed into one of the glass book cases, glass shattering and cascading down around her.

Chris swung at Wesker again and again; the raw hatred so strong inside of him all he wanted was Wesker dead. Wesker too was getting frustrated with the feeble attempts on his life, and he easily hit Chris's fist away, elbowed him hard in the stomach and turned in a flash, his fist around Chris's throat pushing him high up in the air. Chris grunted in surprise, and Wesker slammed him down into the table, sliding Chris along so hard that deep gauges were left in it. His former captain dragged him along the table and let go so that he flew off the end and hit the ground, sliding from the amount of force he had been thrown with, and landing when his shoulder hit the concrete ledge of the wall high window.

Jill was still reeling from the impact, crouched on the ground and panting, holding back a cry from a sharp pain in her side. She looked across the room and saw Chris lying on the ground struggling to get to his feet. His face, Jill could see, was a mixture of pain and fear. Both of their weapons were spent and discarded, and Jill's knife had gotten lost amongst the pile of fallen books and debris. Wesker stood by the end of the table where he had released Chris and she could have sworn she heard him chuckling to himself.

_This is all a game to him._ A wave of sickness passed through her. _Now he's going to kill us._

Wesker moved then, taking slow, forceful steps towards Chris, his fist clenched at his side. Chris still struggled to gain his breath and fight off the pain that was pulling at every inch of him. Jill's eyes were trained on Wesker's hand, flexing and releasing, absolutely fixated on the repeated movement.

The cause of the injuries all of the guardsmen and Spencer himself suddenly became crystal clear to Jill. Clear that it had been Wesker, all of it, Wesker. Whatever he had done to himself, whatever he had become, he was unstoppable and now he was going to kill Chris.

Chris looked up at Wesker, and flinched away from him, a move that brought an ache to Jill's heart as she watched. Wesker reached down and grabbed Chris by the collar, pulling him high up into the air, making him squirm and try and get away, absolutely helpless. He was looking up at Chris, and a panic - fear, so strong it made her sick took over Jill. From across the room, she knew Chris was about to die, and she couldn't let Wesker do that. If Wesker killed Chris, then he won.

"No!" She cried. It was as if nothing else in the world mattered, and the decision had come to her in a split second. The pair stood in front of the high, glass windows, and the edge of the room was over a huge canyon. Wesker wasn't anticipating her; with the right force... the way he was standing...it might work. Chris would be safe, and Wesker gone. Jill's life meant nothing to her in that moment and she rocketed towards them, her feet pounding the ground.

Wesker smirked up at Chris, who looked down at him, weak, helpless, and terrified. Wesker drew back his hand, flexing his fingers, his smirk triumphant.

"Let's finish this." The words pierced through Chris, and he knew everything was over.

A scream echoed around the room, and suddenly Chris hit the floor. Somewhere above him, Jill slammed into Wesker, the impact sending both of them colliding into the window and Chris being showered with wood and glass. The sound of glass breaking, a rush of wind and rain, and a sudden sick silence filled the room.

Chris leapt up, and ran to the window, grabbing the window pane. Broken shards of glass cut into his already aching hands, but he was immune to the pain, bead of blood trickling down the glass.

A sheer drop and a blurred movement of two figures falling down; down, far beneath Chris. His hand reaching uselessly and Jill's name was echoing over the canyon.

The rest was silence.


	6. Walls Are Built to Fall

Shards of glass from the window floated past Jill like falling stars, scratching and cutting her skin as it tumbled by her. The wind was cold... so cold, and getting colder the more she fell. The falling felt as though it would never stop, and Jill could barely breathe. She fought against the stinging wind and the biting cold to keep her eyes open, at least enough to see him; to stay away from him. If Jill Valentine was about to die, Albert Wesker was not the last person she wanted to see.

The occasional flash allowed a fleeting glimpse of him, falling into nothingness beneath her. She couldn't tell if he was conscious or not, or whether he thought he could survive the fall. _I hope he can't. I hope it kills him._ Jill thought, desperately. If this didn't kill him, it would mean she died for nothing, and it meant she had abandoned Chris for nothing. Passing thoughts caused for wonder of whether there was even the slightest chance she was going to survive. It didn't seem likely, and she had no idea that the fall would be so huge. The endless black went on below her for what seemed like forever, with no hint of the ground in sight. Wesker was several feet below her, but he had twisted around and she could have sworn he was looking at her.

_Get away from him, get away; try. Think!_

In mid-air, there was only so much she could do, but she held the advantage of being at least fifty pounds lighter than him and she fell slower than he did. Her mind was a blur, full of memories, and regrets. The image of her long dead parents flashed through her mind, and the tears in her eyes became more than just because of the cold. She missed them, and suddenly found herself hoping that what people thought about death was true, that maybe she would get to be with them again. Jill had always kept a level mind, and cleared it of any hopes or illusions. When someone died, she had always known that they just went in the ground, and that was that. _Or became a zombie._ From there, her thoughts went to Raccoon City, and S.T.A.R.S., and Chris.

 _Oh god, Chris, I am so sorry._ Jill thought. The thought of Chris made her regret the fall, regret all of it. _We should have run, we should have just_ – but Jill didn't finish her thoughts.

She slammed into rock, and her world went black.

Chris hung there, his arm half out the window, his other hand clutching at the shards of glass on the window ledge. Blood was trickling from a gash in his glove from the glass, but he didn't feel it. Chris Redfield couldn't feel anything.

 _Move. Go get her. Go._ He launched himself away from the window, turning and running across the room almost slamming into the abandoned wheelchair. Jill's gun and knife were discarded on the ground, and he felt as if the air was being sucked out of his lungs. _How will she fight? How will she get away?_ Almost as if on autopilot, his hand found the wireless communicator in his ear, and he listened to the connecting beeps. A voice crackled on the other end, but Chris neither heard, nor cared what it told him. _How will she survive?_

"Help," he yelled at whoever was listening. "I need help, please, she fell. Jill fell, she's all alone, she's going to die!" He couldn't think, he couldn't breathe, as he rocketed out of the room. The security panel directly to the main hall had been destroyed, and the thought of whatever he and Jill hadn't killed lingered in his head, but he didn't care. Jill was outside somewhere, and he had to go get her. She was alone with Wesker, and Chris had to rescue her. Heavy boots pounded against the carpeted hallway, and he threw himself down the stairs, not giving a thought to the creatures potentially still hiding in the now uninhabited mansion. When he reached the ladder, he nearly jumped down it, landing with a splash of musty, dirty water. Where they had dropped the door on the creature, its body lay there. The cracked and tossed aside pieces of the door indicated that the thing had tried to move it, but had died trying. Chris didn't think. His hand absently touched a gun in his belt, that at some point he had placed there. There was no memory of picking the weapon up again, he just knew that he needed to get Jill. Leaping over the body and the broken door, he ran back through the maze on autopilot, with only his lost partner in his head.

Frustration was burning in him, and panic was setting in when he remember they hadn't _walked_ down here; they had _fallen_. After several dead ends Chris found a pile of rubble that must have slid down after Jill, since this wasn't the place he had fallen. A hard kick didn't move the rubble. Placing his feet and hands carefully, he began to climb, slipping only a few times, and finally hoisting himself up to the floor above. He continued, fighting through the hallways and dungy smell, ignoring the distant rattle of chains. Climb and run, climb and run... his whole body numb and tingling. When he reached the gate they had cranked, the image of Jill cranking it open for him flashed across his mind, and he felt tears stinging his eyes, and rage filled him. He slammed his shoulder into the gate three times before it fell from its hinges. Bolting from the door, he ran as fast as he could and then he was outside, the rain falling steadily now, lightening flashing across the sky.

__

The back, I have to get to the back.

There were rumbles different from the thunder, and lights coming at Chris. _You called for backup._ He ran around the side of the house, stumbling through mud, shrubs and overgrown grass, his legs pumping, heart pounding so loudly it was all he could hear. Somewhere behind him, his name was being called, but nothing was registering in his brain except the unrelenting urge to find Jill. The cold air burned his lungs as he sucked in deep breaths, his boots pounding the mud, splashing it up onto his pants. The mansion loomed into the darkness, and from the outside seemed even more vast and impossible. Chris rounded several corners, thinking of the sliver of outdoors they had seen before they met Wesker.

 _Water, listen for water._ But with the rain, this proved more difficult than need be. The edge came too quickly out of the darkness, and Chris fell backwards to stop himself from tumbling down the sheer drop. Panic was bubbling as he followed the edge of the crevice along the back of the house. His eyes moved up the stained brick and wood, until they landed upon a gaping black hole in the side of the place where a window used to be. Pieces of frame and molding were hanging out of the window, and each lightening flash illuminated the room. Chris edged his way to the edge of the precipice and stared down. The blackness went on forever, and his eyes were stinging again.

The sound of rain hitting rock surrounded Jill, and she was aware of cold ground under her cheek. She had landed on her stomach, and was soaked through her uniform. Her eyes fluttered open, and she lay there, completely still.

_I'm alive._

When she tried to move, her entire body screamed in protest, and she groaned, holding still. The sensible part of her was telling her to stay there; that help would come. The ground had come much faster than she had thought, and she was relieved that she wasn't falling anymore. _He must be here, somewhere, he must._ She thought in a panic, knowing that she couldn't just lay there if he was. _If I'm alive so is he._ Her eyes flickered open again and stared ahead, seeing nothing. There was nothing but rain and darkness, but something wasn't quite right. The rain wasn't hitting the ground in some parts; in fact, there were only a few feet of ground before the rain was disappearing somewhere.

_Get up and look._

Standing up was an impossibility, she was in so much pain, so Jill resolved to slowly propping herself up on her arms. She turned her head to the side, and looked the other way. To her right was a rock wall, sloping upwards, beyond Jill's line of view. Ahead of her, anther two feet of ground before the rain started to disappear.

 _You're not done falling yet._ She thought. _Shit shit shit._ But this wasn't a bad thing, she realized. Maybe she hadn't fallen too far, maybe she was still in sight of someone who might be looking down from the top of the cliff. Curiosity was getting the best of her, and she needed to see how far away from the ground she was. Jill figured that maybe if she could see Wesker's body, she could just hide on this ledge until help came. _If help came._

A sound jolted her to complete consciousness. It sounded of small rocks, and gravel sliding down a cliff face. It was coming from the left edge she had woken up to see. Slowly and cautiously, she edged herself a little closer, pain screaming from every inch of her body. Tears sprang to her eyes, and she had to bite her tongue to keep from crying out. If Wesker was down there, she didn't want him to know where she was, even though it wouldn't take much figuring out on his part. The sound of more pebbles falling made themselves heard through the rain, and Jill hesitated.

 _What if those are rocks falling from above? What if this ledge is going to break?_ She edged forward a little more, and a little more. It was a definite edge; that much Jill could tell. _A little closer, a little closer..._ The rock seemed to almost creak beneath her and she froze. The fall had loosened the edge of rock she had collided with, and the sudden shift in weight was testing it. Another sound, accompanied by more falling rocks came, louder and closer than before. Jill's heart was pounding so hard that sound came in waves to her. Dizziness was filling her head, and her skin was tingling. The rain was freezing and small puddles were forming. Jill was so close to the ledge now that if she outstretched her arm, her hand would stick off the edge. But getting to the ledge was the last thing Jill wanted to do. Her eyes were wide and trained on the edge. Several moments went by, and Jill went to move backwards at the same time Wesker's arm swung over the edge.

 _"NO!"_ Jill screamed, as loud as she could, and he missed her as she pulled back. Pain was throbbing so badly in her arm that Jill feared she would pass out. Fear was pulling at her, and she felt like crying. The ledge seemed to get impossibly small, and Wesker was pulling himself up causing large chunks of it to crumble away. He swiped at her but this time her snatched her, his hand tightening in an iron grip around her wrist, and Jill could feel the broken bones beneath crushing against each other.

"I am taking you with me." The fury in his voice was ice cold, and it terrified Jill to her core. With a hard tug, Jill tumbled over the ledge like a rag doll, and Wesker's grip wasn't getting any lighter. _He's holding me to him. He's keeping us together. Oh god, oh god, fuck, fuck!_ Jill realized. Struggling was absolutely pointless, and the pain of Jill's broken and bleeding body was unbearable. Jill squeezed her eyes shut and wished more than anything that she would just pass out.

Sooner than she thought, she got her wish.

 _"Jill!"_ The shout echoed down, but between the gusting wind and the thunder, he didn't see how she'd ever hear him. Still lost in panic he was foolishly scrambling down a small series of jutting rock, when firm hands grabbed him by the collar and hoisted him up.

"Redfield, stop. STOP!" Chris was struggling, but found himself locked in the grasp of Kirk, a friend and colleague from the BSAA. "You can't just go down there by yourself, you'll fall down there too."

_But it's Jill, I have to._

"I have to get down there, she's in danger, I have to rescue her, I-"

Chris froze, and his head snapped towards the ledge. _I heard...I could have sworn I heard..._ The thought of Jill down there somewhere, screaming for help, tore at Chris's heart. He had been told by his captain, his friends, hell, even his sister a thousand times over that being Jill's partner would only work if he kept his feelings out of it, but right now they were consuming him.

"I know, Chris, believe me I know. Listen, there's repelling gear, the rescue squad is bringing it over now." Kirk's voice brought Chris back to reality, and he suddenly became aware of all the activity at the site. Chris looked past Kirk to see trucks rolling in, armed men jumping out and dragging huge cables over to where they stood. "We're going to send a rescue team down, there's a chance she could have landed on a ledge..."

"She's with Wesker." Chris was panting for breath, struggling to get the oxygen he needed. The image of the two of them tangled together, flying out into the dark was burned into his mind. "She tackled him, and it's my fault. I was going to die, she saved me but now she's gone and I have to save her, Kirk, I _have_ to..."

Kirk clenched his teeth together and shook Chris firmly. "Redfield, you listen to me. You're in shock, you need to take a few deep breaths and calm down, or else I cannot allow you to repel down there with us. Do you understand?"

The look in Chris's eyes must have spoken volumes to Kirk, because the severity in his features softened, and his grip on Chris's shoulders. Kirk sighed. "Look Chris, I know. I know that it's Jill, and I know the history between the two of you, and I _know_ how you feel about her. But you need to listen to me. We aren't going to get anywhere with you not in control, and if you want to find her, you need to calm down. Okay?"

The heartbeat in Chris's ears made all the talking and sound come in pulses, fading in and out, but he managed to intake what was being said to him. He closed his eyes. _Breathe. Just breathe._ He opened them, and gave Kirk a nod. "How long since I contacted you?"

"The pair of you entered the mansion over five hours ago. You radioed us about thirty minutes ago."

__

It's been a whole hour? It took me half an hour to get here?

"Has...has there been any contact from, from Jill?" Chris could barely get the words out. Kirk didn't shut him down, but his look was grim.

"We tried contacting Valentine just after you paged us. We received nothing but static, and the GPS system has been destroyed." The words were like knives in Chris's heart. Kirk's eyes were moving over Chris's face, a deep frown settling on his friend's own features. "Are you sure you want to go down with us? You look awful."

"I'm sure." Chris was doing his best to keep the emotion out of his voice. _Be a blank page. Unreadable._ By now men had reached them, and were adjusting themselves in repelling gear. Chris went over to them and began fitting himself with gear of his own, tightening the clasps.

"It'll take us a while to get to the bottom. We still don't seem to have a solid grasp of how deep the fall is, or have any idea of what Spencer may have wandering around here." The man in charge said. Chris listened to him rattle off protocol; what to look for, the signals if they found something, but Chris didn't need to listen. Anything they found that wasn't Jill didn't matter to him.

After what felt like hours, a team of just about two dozen men stood at the top of the mountain, while another three or four dozen stood above, holding repel lines. Chris's heart would not stop pounding, but aside from that, his body was still numb.

"We go down on three." Kirk said, in a loud and authoritative voice, checking both ways down the line. He was met with a serious of solemn nods, from uniformed BSAA soldiers. "One, two, three."

Chris Redfield kicked himself off of the side.


	7. Don't Wake Me Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wesker deals with his problem, and Jill dreams of her last night with Chris.

Albert Wesker had survived a half a dozen situations that no human could have. Each time he had come back, more determined than the last to make himself stronger. Strength and power had become the driving forces behind his madness, and through each near death experience, he learned more about himself. The first thing he learned was that when he came back to life, he came back bit by bit, sense by sense.

The sense of sound was always the first to return. Right now, the sounds of rain surrounded Wesker, filling puddles on the ground and dripping down the sheer rock face. Thunder rumbled from somewhere high above him, and everything sounded as if he were hearing it from far away. The sounds of the storm surrounded him, and for one fleeting moment, he wondered what he was doing outside. Everything got gradually louder, as if he were emerging from underwater, until the noise surrounded him.

The second sense to return was the ability to feel, and what Wesker felt was pain. Pain was something he hadn't had to deal with, and when he did, he had become the master of it. Wesker's ability to suppress pain was unyielding, and he had learned to overcome whatever was thrown at him. The sudden and unavoidable feeling of pain was what made Wesker snap back to consciousness. He opened his eyes, and was met by stinging blindness from the right eye, and burning in the left. He closed them again and took a deep breath, even that proving to be a challenge. Although the viruses prevented him from suffering much damage, he could feel everything that would have been broken, and could feel his body fixing itself. He could feel his resistance.

He lifted his fingers to his face, lightly touching around his right eye, seeing red against the black of his gloves when he pulled his hand away. The collision of broken glass, and tumbling against the rock wall had severely cut him up. Taking another measured breath, he again was met with heaviness on his chest.

_Valentine._

Slowly, almost carefully, he raised his head to look down the length of his torso. The unmoving, unconscious body of Jill Valentine was lying sideways on top of him, her cheek against his chest, and her arms and legs against the ground. Her right arm was twisted awkwardly, and Wesker didn't need to investigate to know she had broken it. He lifted his arm and flattened his hand against her back. He could feel a rising and falling with the breaths she took, and felt a weak but steady pulse. He pushed her off of him, her body sliding onto the ground as he rose, slowly. He felt shaky and uneasy, shards of broken glass falling off of him and clinking to the ground, pieces of rock and debris sticking to the back of his coat.

Straightening his back, his bones cracked and Wesker looked around them. They had landed, finally, on the flat, hard base of the cavern. He had taken the full force of the impact, and a deep crack in the ground had resulted. Broken glass, pieces of wood, and rocks and pebbles scattered the ground around where they had been lying. All sense of time was gone, but he was relieved to see that it was still dark, and that the rain had picked up. The blood that had gathered around them, and that Jill was now resting in was slowly washing away. Wesker took a step to where the woman lay, and nudged her over onto her back with the toe of his boot. She rolled over, her body lifeless. The glass and rocks had torn at her clothes, and everything except her boots, uniform and belt had been lost. A dark bruise was already forming on her cheek, and blood stained her shirt, and was trailing from the corner of her mouth. Wesker stood over her, staring down at her for several, long moments.

The sounds of voices made Wesker snap his head upwards, and he closed his eyes, focusing hard on the space high above them. _There_. He heard it again, the distinct sound of several voices, yelling out, echoing down the cliff. _Redfield_. A red hot, numbing anger filled him, and he clenched his fist, feeling little glass bits that were stuck to his glove being pushed through the material, cutting his skin. He looked back down at Jill and fought the over whelming urge to snap her neck and leave her there for the BSAA to find. They would attribute it to the fall.Wesker stood by her unmoving body, thinking for a moment.

_You were so close. You had him. He was going to die_. Looking left and right, Wesker knew where they were. There had been a time, years ago, that he had wandered down here.

The huge cliff behind the Spencer Estate narrowed down to a small, flat crevice that stretched on like a large and rock scattered road. The hard, cold ground here had not been touched by anything of human manufacture in years. Before Umbrella tanked, when Spencer first purchased the large mansion, he had taken advantage of the vast expansion of land and hidden places the location had to offer. Several Umbrella workers discovered this exact place, walking through the narrow fissure of rock.

The stretch of bare rock twisted and wound its way through the two cliffs like a long since abandoned road, dark caves and boulders scattered throughout. Wesker knew, however, that the darkness held more than just naturally made enclosures. _They would still be here._ He thought.

Wesker was unsure of what he was going to do with Jill, and where he was going to go from here. Wesker had not gone to the mansion anticipating either of the two to survive. _All three of them were going to be dead, and I was going to be free._

Bending down, Wesker slid his hands under Jill and picked her up, her limp body weighing nothing to him. Rising, he stood a moment, looking left, and then right. Jill's head was resting in the crook of his arm, her own broken arm folded over top of her, her other arm hanging free. A shallow, weak sound of her breathing was faintly audible over the echoing storm. Turning and walking right, Wesker began heading down the narrow, winding pathway, and away from the faint sounds of voices. After several steps, a faint noise from his arms made him look down at the woman.

Her eyes were moving beneath the lids, and she let out a soft groan. Wesker paused, taking a quick glance behind them, and looking down at Jill. He turned his ear towards her and held his breath, annoyance at the loudness of the storm passing over him. Jill was speaking, and the words he heard, hardly louder than a whisper, sent something through Wesker that made him almost glad she had pushed him out of that window.

"I'm sorry, Chris."

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_Jill Valentine was exhausted, but she knew sleep would never come to her. Instead, she was sitting with her knees pulled to her chin in the office chair Chris Redfield had in his room. She had her arms pulled tight around her legs and was watching Chris go through a bunch of documents. She had offered him the desk, but he had laughed and said it was fine, so here she sat. The papers in front of him were all the gathered intel on Oswell E. Spencer, the man the pair were destined to locate and interrogate the following day. They had been going over them for hours and hours, ensuring that they knew as much as they could about the man and where he lived._

_It had taken the B.S.A.A. over a year to track down the location of the estate; the place which Spencer called home. Spencer had been in hiding there ever since Umbrella had fallen. Chris and Jill needed to find it in order to question Albert Wesker, because if there was anyone in the world that would know where he was, Oswell Spencer was that person. They hadn't even found the location on their own, one of their lead research teams was given a piece of information from a reliable informant who had previously worked for Umbrella._

__

Jill had familiarized herself with the information already, and knew what each paper contained. Chris, however, sat reading and rereading everything, even things that Jill knew he need not bother with. He knows everything. _She thought._ Why won't he just go to sleep?

_Jill knew that she should go to sleep too, but the thought of being alone in bed in the dark bothered her. Ever since she'd found out they'd be going on this assignment, a nervousness had settled in her stomach, and instead of easing up with reassurance, it only twisted and turned inside of her. Chris had prodded her about it, asking why she was so quiet, asking why she wasn't eating. At first she had lied; told him it was just the time zone difference from travelling from the US to Europe, and at first that wasn't a total lie. Once Chris' own time zone sickness had worn off, Jill's excuse stopped working and she felt guilted into telling him the truth. Where she had expected him to laugh at her, his brows had creased and he'd sat with her and asked why. He had squeezed her arm, and thinking of that now, again, her arm tingled._

_She crossed her legs in the office chair and wrapped her arms around herself. Chris leaned back against the edge of the metal framed bed, looking at Jill and sighed._

_"How are you feeling?" His blue eyes moved over her, studying her face._

_"Fine. Better." She lied, dropping her eyes to her lap. She heard Chris rise, shuffling all the papers into a single pile and shoving them into the files he had strewn across the messy covers. Jill peeked up at him through her lashes, and watched him stretch, the t-shirt pulling tight against his muscular torso, and showing an inch of skin. She felt heat in her cheeks, and was thankful he only had on the dim light on his bedside table. Chris turned and moved to the desk, dropping the stack of folders and papers down just behind her, before going back over to the bed._

_"We're going to be fine, Jill." He grabbed all the sheets on the bed and piled them on top of the pillows, taking the thin, bottom sheet and tossing it over the bed. "Just think about everything we've ever dealt with, think of it. S.T.A.R.S., Raccoon City, and everything since." He pulled each blanket apart and tossed it over the bed, before folding the top half down. He began re-organizing the pillows, and Jill realized he never made the bed for just himself. Her heart thumped and she abruptly stood up from the chair, her head spinning a bit after sitting down for so long._

_Chris turned to look at her, and gave her a smile. "Jill, I promise you we'll be fine."_

This could be your last night with him.

_She stretched too, smiling back. "You're right. It's late, I should really try and get some sleep." She gestured to the bed. "You should too."_

_Chris looked down at the bed as if he'd almost forgotten that's what he was leaning against. "Yeah," he said after a moment. "I should. We have a long day comin'." He looked back at her, and they stood in silence for a moment._

_"Well, goodnight." She said, turning and going to the door._

__

"Jill," she paused. Her heart was pounding and she turned around. He was looking after her with sad eyes. He opened his mouth to say something, and then closed it, sighing softly to himself. "I'll see you in the morning."

__

"See you." She let out the breath she hadn't realized she was holding, and it was all she could do to put her hand on the door handle and turn it. "Night."

__

"Goodnight, Jill."

__

She pulled the door open, stepped out into the hall, and pulled the door shut with a click. She stood a moment in the dark, empty hallway of the B.S.A.A.'s dormitory, and chewed her lip. Forcing herself down the hallway, she went to her own room. Chris and Jill basically had the entire hall to themselves. It was meant for the team, but since the pair operated alone, they had been given use of the space to do with as they pleased. Her room was at the end of the hall, and when she pushed the door open and turned on the light, she regretted leaving Chris. Going over to the set of drawers, she pulled out a plain black pair of shorts and a grey t-shirt, her usual bed attire. She grabbed her toothbrush , toothpaste and face wash, and went back out to the hallway, closing her door behind her. One of the perks of being the only two in the hallway, meant she had the female washroom entirely to herself. 

_The bathroom was a typical, army-base style washroom. Stainless steel sink, plain black counter, cupboards with towels and clothes, an all glass shower stall, and a plain black tub set in the wall. She set her stuff down on the counter, changed into her pajamas, brushed her teeth and scrubbed down her face. It was as she was patting the water off her face, that she looked at herself in the mirror._

He wanted you to stay. _She thought of the way he had looked after her as she went to leave._ He wanted to make you feel safe.

_"You can be really stupid sometimes." She said to her reflection. Her stomach was twisting and making her feel sick, the worry filling her thoughts. If she were right, if the nagging, bothersome feelings were right, and something bad was going to happen the next day, she would never forgive herself._ If I lose Chris tomorrow, I'll feel guilty for the rest of my life. _Things with Chris had never been simple. Jill knew exactly how he felt about her, and she felt the same, but being partners, well, that had always made things hard._

_Jill walked from the bathroom back to her room and tossed her things on her bed, hoping Chris wasn't asleep. Going back to the hallway, she walked quietly down to Chris's door. The crack of light was still there, and she shivered, her exposed skin covered in goosebumps. The entire B.S.A.A. facility always felt cold to her, and the constant rain and wind in Europe did nothing to help. Her heart thumping away, she knocked gently on the door._

_"Come in." Pushing the door open, she slipped inside and shut the door behind her. Chris was leaning back against pillows, a magazine open against his knees. When he saw her, he sat upright and put the magazine on the table._

_"Jill," She bit her lip and twisted her fingers in nervousness._

_"Can I, um," she looked down at her feet. "can I sleep here tonight?" Her eyes moved up to look at him, and he was staring back at her._

_"Of course you can." He slid over in the large bed, and pushed the sheets aside. His room, like the hallway, was freezing, and the large, thick blankets looked so appealing. Her feet moved softly over the cold, tile floor, and she climbed up into the bed, settling against the pillows and pulling the covers up over herself. The shivering wouldn't stop, despite the warmth on the mattress from where Chris had just been lying._

_"I was about to go to sleep, unless you wanted to talk or..."_

_"No." She said a bit too abruptly. "I mean, no... I just, I just want to try and get some sleep." She said quietly. A shiver went through her, and she could hear the dull hum of the air circulating from the vent across the room. She wiggled down deeper against the pillows and blankets, and peeked over at Chris. He was looking at her lying there and she blushed again. He sighed._

_"Okay. Can I turn off the light then?" Jill could have easily clicked off the light for him, but she nodded and pulled the thin cover up to her chin. The corner of Chris' mouth twitched in amusement, and he nodded. He sat up and leaned over, reaching over her to click off the little light. His torso pressed against her as he did it, and she closed her eyes at the warmth of him. She inhaled his smell and it was all she could do not to wrap her arms around him, but she resisted. A second later, the room became totally dark, and she felt him move back over in the bed, the warmth leaving._

_Jill rolled over onto her side, facing away from Chris and sighed quietly into the pillow. The dull hum of the air vent was the only thing that disturbed the silence of the room. As she lay there, she tried to push away the worries she'd had, but they wouldn't stop._ He's beside you. He's right there, just roll over and reach out to him. _Jill rolled over, doing her best not disturb the blankets and faced Chris. Her eyes were still adjusting to the darkness, but she could tell he was lying on his back, but not whether or not he was awake. The urge to touch him, to be closer to him was pulling at her, and she finally decided to give in._

_Jill reached out and touched her fingers gently against his chest, flattening her hand and moving her thumb over the thin material of his shirt. He stirred, and she could actually feel his heart skip a beat. Her own heart did an odd feeling beat of its own, and she slid her arm over his chest, sliding closer to him, wiggling over until she could rest her cheek on his chest._

_"Jill..." Chris' voice was barely audible, and hearing it made Jill squeeze her eyes shut and nuzzle against him. His arms moved around her, and held her tightly against his body. Without any warning at all, Jill felt hot tears form in her eyes, and she was forced to sniffle as quietly as she could. Quietly wasn't quite enough, and Chris's grip around her loosened._

_"Hey...hey what's wrong?" His voice was gentle and filled with concern. Jill tried to pull away from him to hide her face in the pillows, but he wouldn't let her and she was forced to look up at him_. 

_"It's nothing." Her voice was shaky, and she felt angry with herself._ You are being so stupid, you're crying over nothing.

_"It's obviously not nothing, c'mon. You can tell me." His brows were creased and he moved his hand to brush the tears off her cheeks._

_"I'm just scared, Chris." She sniffed again, and closed her eyes against the feeling of his hand against her cheek. "I'm just so scared I'm gonna lose you."_

_He sat up, and she slid off of his chest and onto the pillows and blankets. He propped himself up on one arm and looked down at her, keeping his other hand against her cheek, brushing the hair behind her ear._

_"This about the worries you've been having?"_

_She felt more tears, and sniffled again, nodding._

_"Jill, look at me, just look and listen. You are not going to lose me, okay? I don't know what's making you worry, or why you feel like this, but you have no reason to. We know what we're going to do. We're going to go there, kill whatever monsters he set up for us, find him, apprehend him and come back. It's nothing we haven't done before." He moved a bit closer to her, and she wiped her eyes. "Now stiffen up that lip, Jill Valentine. You're a fighter, and the Jill I know would take the worries and kick them in the ass."_

_Jill laughed at that. "You're right." She looked up at him, and studied his face. "You're right." She whispered again, and moved a bit closer._ He was so close, and right there, all she had to do was lean forward...

_She closed her eyes and pressed her lips against his. He responded immediately, pulling her close to him and kissing back. They broke apart, and lay there with their noses touching._

_"Chris..."_

_He kissed her again, leaning into her and rolling her onto her back, moving against her. His body was warm against hers, and his kisses were deep. When she felt his tongue gently press against her lips, she parted them for him, and moved her hands down his back. Jill's heart was pounding, and for one split second, she almost made him stop, but when she felt his hands moving over her, she shuddered and urged him on. They undressed, their kisses never ceasing, and Jill got lost with him, completely, as she always did when they were together like this. The more Chris kissed her, the more she relaxed, and as his mouth moved, his hands moved, and eventually his body moved against hers, she lost herself against him and for those moments, she was happy. Despite all the worries she had, despite the gnawing fear, Chris was making her happy, and what's more, he was making her feel protected._

_Chris was kissing her, his mouth against hers, against her neck; the warmth of his breath against her skin, and the feeling of him was incredible, and when she came, her body quivered underneath him, gasping in pleasure. Moments after, Chris finished, groaning and shuddering, the two of them lying there without moving. Chris collapsed on top of her, kissing her neck and then her cheek, and Jill wrapped her arms around him, catching her breath and burying her face against the heat of his skin._

_Jill had always enjoyed the after part of sex, and now Chris was falling asleep on top of her, and she was lying beneath him, worries all but forgotten. Jill's eyes were heavy as she settled into the warmth of the blankets. Chris's breath was warm and comforting against her neck, and he sighed happily against her._

_"I promise you we'll be okay, Jill." He whispered. "And the morning after Spencer, we're going to wake up side by side. I'm gonna roll over and say 'I told you everything was gonna be okay."_


	8. Hiding in Plain Sight

A heartbeat is always loudest when asleep and there's silence all around. In silence, the heart is like a bass drum, pounding, louder than anything yet not making a sound. A heart could tell many things. A heart tells of fear, or of excitement; it can tell of nervousness or anxiety or panic. In the end, the heartbeat is always the last sound before death – the one that lingers, long after the sounds of the world have died away.

Jill Valentine's heart was telling her that she was alive. _Alive_. The word seemed to float in her mind, just behind her eyes. The heartbeat in her chest was screaming in her ears. For several moments, Jill didn't know why she was asleep.

__

Spencer...have to...find...Spencer...

A memory drifted into her mind, almost like a dream...

Chris was beside her, and for some reason their guns were drawn. They were somewhere big...somewhere unpleasantly familiar... _mansion...Spencer..._ Spencer, that's why they were here... _basement...not safe_...a dark hallway swam behind her eyes. _We...we found him..._

A dead body on the floor, the body of Oswell Spencer...and behind him...

_Wesker._

Wesker had been there, they hadn't been expecting that. _We wouldn't have...been alone_...the thoughts were all blurry, and coming in flashes, some more clearly than others. It was as if Jill was struggling to remember a quickly fading dream, except instead of becoming vaguer, the thoughts got clearer. Wesker had been unbelievably fast, and strong, and suddenly Jill realized it wouldn't have mattered if they'd had an entire BSAA team with them, they would not have stood a chance.

_But we did...we...we survived..._

Blinding flashes of light from outside illuminating a dusty room filled with the smell of moulding paper, and death. The bodies of security guards, all with matching wounds...rotting, decaying creatures in a waste-laden, torture chamber-like basement. The air had been such a relief, and Chris had found them weapons again. All that was left was Spencer...

_Spencer..._

Something had been wrong, and Jill had known. All those months and months of feeling awful and crying, and being too anxious to spend any time with Chris at all, despite his constant questioning, and concerned glances; Jill had known something bad was going to happen. Whether that came from years by Chris' side, or whether it was just a survival instinct inside her, she had _known._

And now Jill knew she was in trouble.

Jill had been knocked unconscious before, and she knew the process of coming back to life. The senses came back one at a time, each one making it known to her, each one alerting her to wherever she was. The first sense to return was pain.

Whatever Jill had thought she would feel like if she survived did not align with how she felt, and the pain she felt wasn't anywhere near the amount she should be feeling. _Somebody's given me something._ The thought should have been hopeful, but vague pictures in Jill's mind prevented the positive emotions. Instead, a sense of anxiety was inside of her.

_What...happened..._

She remembered sudden cold and wet. There was a storm outside, it had come at last. The downpour of rain and flashes of light across the dark autumn sky had finally delivered the storm they had been promising. _But how did I get outside..._ Whatever the BSAA had given her was really knocking her for a loop. _The BSAA...but how did they..._

Shattering glass; shards of it falling past her. Falling...falling... _the window_. Like a movie, a scene played in her mind of Chris being thrown across the room, and Wesker's silhouette moving after him. The determination of his walk had terrified Jill. She remembered silently urging Chris to get up, and when Wesker picked her partner up, Jill had known the only thing she could do was sacrifice herself for him.

Jill remembered falling, she had fallen with Wesker...

_And Chris had found me!_ The thought jolted her into wakefulness. Her eyes snapped open, and she squinted upwards. There was a bright white light shining down in her eyes. A dull headache was pounding behind her eyes, and whatever medication she had been given made her whole head feel very light. Jill went to raise a hand to shield her vision, but found her arm was stuck.

_A...sling. Your arm's in a sling..._ She raised her other arm, and blocked the light. Her movements felt slow, and her limbs felt heavy. _Numb. God, I can't feel anything._ It was strong, the painkiller she'd been given, yet there was something wrong. Jill's heart was still pounding in her ears, but over its loud thumping, Jill could hear nothing. It was totally silent.

Where was Chris? Why wasn't he in the room, why wasn't anyone in the room? Where was the beep of a heartrate monitor, or the hum of the hospital, or the feeling of the bed beneath her back. The room was hospital bright and hospital white, but everything else seemed like a half drawn image. Her eyes finally adjusting, Jill found herself gazing up into bright white lights. _Something's not right._ It was far too quiet for her. Every hospital facility the BSAA had was filled with beeps, and hums, and talking, even on the quietest of days. The silence that Jill found herself surrounded by was unnerving. Turning, she looked and saw a table, with a scattering of supplies across it. A used syringe, a torn white sheet...this was no proper hospital facility.

"C-Chris?" Her voice cracked and hurt when she spoke, and was hardly louder than a whisper. Trying to sit up, Jill rose, the room spinning dizzily before her eyes and her body felt as though it were made of rubber. It took her a moment to stave off the nausea, and when she could see straight again, she knew this was no BSAA facility. "Chris?" She asked again, her voice louder this time, but she received no response. Her body had a dull, achy feeling which surfaced out of the numbness, as if her injuries had been sustained weeks ago. Looking back to the table, she could see that the syringe had dust on it, in fact, the entire room seemed unused...

The table Jill had been placed on had been covered in dust, disturbed from the movement of placing her on it. Sliding her feet off the edge of the table, Jill saw blood streaked down her pants, so much blood that she felt dizzy. _How could one person survive losing so much blood?_ The bare floor was cold against her feet, and she realized her shoes had been removed and two cold metal bars which had been crudly cut in half acted as a splint around her right ankle. After a bleary look around the room, she saw her shoes standing upright along a plain white wall. Her hair was sticking to her forehead, and her heart was skipping weak beats from the movement after being still. Jill went to take a step towards her things, but went over on ankle restricted by the bars and fell to the floor. Despite the blurry feeling from the medication, Jill gasped in pain as it felt like razors were being shot up her leg. Cringing, her hand moved to her pant leg and she gingerly pulled it up. Aside from being filthy and scraped, her ankle was swollen within its confines.

"Now, Miss Valentine, did you really think you were above a broken ankle after a fall like that?"

Jill's stomach flew into her throat, and she put all of her weight into rolling away from the voice. Icy jolts of pain were going through her body, and the throbbing that accompanied the sudden movement almost made her pass out. Her ankle screaming in protest, Jill feebly shuffled away from a dark shadow she was convinced hadn't been there seconds ago.

"No...no it's not..." the words would barely come out, her breathing was so fast and painful, as if her lungs were filled with broken glass.

"Miss Valentine, you are pushing yourself a little hard after being unconscious for seven hours, wouldn't you say?"

It felt as if she were out in the cold, pounding rain again. _SEVEN hours? No...no seven hours hadn't passed. She had just been awake...where is the BSAA?_ Jill couldn't understand, and her heart was racing.

"Yes, Jill, you've been in my care for seven hours now." Wesker's voice was calm, and what's more, despite the tears in his clothing, he didn't look as though he had a scratch on him. "Surprised to be alive?" The casual, condescending nature of his words terrified her.

_Pacing, always pacing. Why did he always have to pace?_

Jill felt like prey that had been crippled, and now the beast was just waiting for the kill. _Why_ am _I alive?_ Feeling vulnerable and afraid, Jill was in too much pain to defend herself should she need, and though her shoes and sodden belongings were piled against the wall, she saw no weapon to use. Instead she shuffled backwards, painfully, until she bumped the wall beside her boots. Wesker had made his way over to the table and was now staring down at it. After a moment, he picked up the empty syringe and twirled it lazily between his gloved fingers.

"There are easier ways of taking your life, Miss Valentine." His voice was taunting, mocking what had happened. _Why isn't he angry? I ruined it, I ruined his chance...he should be furious..._ Jill's eyes watched the empty needle move, a blur between his fingers.

"What was in that?" Her throat hurt, everything hurt. Whatever he had given her was wearing off, and Jill was feeling the force of the fall. Wesker stopped moving the small tube, and gave it a thoughtful look, as if he'd thought it had been a pen.

"Pain killer. An old viral sample. Measles. I really have no idea. I was concerned as to whether or not it would help with the pain or make it worse." He said these words with mock concern, clearly hoping it had been the latter. Taking a step closer to Jill, his red eyes did a once over of her appearance. _His glasses are gone._ "It certainly did nothing for the appearance of your injuries." He jeered. The comment only furthered Jill's confusion. _Why is he so calm?_ It made her uneasy. A sudden loud beeping noise startled Jill so badly she hit her good arm against the wall. Wesker flinched at the noise, whipping around and striding across the room to a panel along the wall Jill hadn't noticed before. Wesker, Jill noticed, _was_ limping slightly. In fact, now that she had a moment to look at him, she noticed that he was also filthy, stained with dirt and blood. His hair, though still pushed into place, looked wet and was as dirty as his clothing, which was torn in several places. Aside from the limp and missing shades, Wesker looked and acted more or less fine.

The buzzing subsided after he had pushed something into the panel's keyboard. A loud, clear female voice echoed through the room. "Seventy-two hours of oxygen remaining." Jill's heart gave a leap. _That's three days. Only three days of oxygen? Where are we?_ "Where..."

"An old facility placed here by Spencer, back when Umbrella had just been founded." Pacing again, Wesker went over to the monitor attached to the end of the panel and tapped it, opening a complicated looking screen. "There are several exactly like it all around the mansion, that thankfully the BSAA failed to discover." A hint of satisfaction there. _We did scans of the area..._ "It will have to suffice until we can leave. As you may have heard," another infuriating smirk, "that's in seventy-two hours." Jill's attention had gotten stuck on the monitor. Small, blurry images of people were wandering around in what looked like pounding rain, all with flashlights and apparently dressed in uniform. Hands shaking, Jill unsteadily rose to her feet, which threatened to give out from underneath her at any second.

"Oh good, you've noticed that the security cameras hidden around the mansion still work as well." The sarcasm went over her head completely this time. The camera was trained on one of the blurred figures. "The BSAA are doing their best to thoroughly search the area. How unlucky that the weather is being so uncooperative." Jill's heart was racing as the figure on the monitor handed something to another figure. The figure had dark hair. Wesker looked from Jill to the monitor, then to the far wall. "And how unfortunate that they have yet to realize that they are standing just outside of whom they are looking for." Jill whipped her head to the wall he was staring at and saw nothing, until she noticed a thin line that separated it from the floor. _A door. This room is inside one of the rock walls. They're right outside. the doors._ Without thinking, Jill took several jolting, stiff steps towards the door.

"Chris! Chris, I'm in here! Help, please, Chris..." she was screaming. This was her only chance, if Wesker hadn't allowed her to die during the fall, he was planning on something worse, she knew it. This was the only chance she had, so to hell with it, she was going to scream for all she was worth. Wesker, however, did not seem to think this was acceptable. Moving across the room so quickly Jill didn't see him, his grip found her throat and she was slammed back against the wall, his fingers cutting off almost all of her air. The pain from the impact and the force of his arm across her throat made her vision fade, and her whole body feel as though it were on fire. Everything in her stomach churned and the rubbery numbness was going away faster than Jill could adapt to.

"Scream all you'd like, Miss Valentine. They won't hear you. They aren't going to save you."

Gasping with a mixture of fear and pain, Jill felt tears fill her eyes and begin leaking out. From behind Wesker, the figures began looking along the wall opposite the camera. "Why didn't you just let me die?" She choked out, the combination of Wesker's grip and crying making her voice shake. Wesker leaned in close to Jill, closer than she would have liked, and his grip tightened just a bit further, the pain becoming unbearable.

"Because, Jill," a horrible smirk working its way across his features, "death would have been too easy."

"Time is 4:34am. BSAA efforts in the search of Jill Valentine are being wrapped up for the evening. Search will resume in o600 hours, during which time search and rescue teams will be aided by helicopter surveillance of the surrounding forested area of the Spencer Mansion. Over three dozen men have participated, lead by Chris Redfield, leading officer in the BSAA, partner of..."

Chris had to stop listening, it was making him sick. There was no body anywhere. The rain was still pouring, and was obliterating any evidence. The only proof that seemed to suggest anything out of the ordinary may have happened here was a deep crack in the otherwise solid stone ground. Kirk was reading out his official log for the evening, and the men all around Chris were returning the equipment to the trucks. Too many hours had gone by, and Chris was beginning to feel the weight of realization descend upon his shoulders. A blurry, panic-stricken phone call to Barry Burton had resulted in the cold comfort of knowing the older man was flying to Europe from South America to join the search for Jill Valentine. 

Sitting on a jutting edge of rock, Chris sat, staring down along the cliff's floor, as if expecting to see Jill hiding in the shadows. The ability to be helpful in the search had left him about an hour earlier, when Kirk and said his agitation was doing nothing in aiding the search. Just by the tones of voices, he could tell his team was giving up already. There was no body, and therefore no proof. Nothing to rescue.

_Where are you, Jill?_


	9. As Time Flies By

"Time remaining; four hours and twenty-seven minutes"

The detached female voice echoed around the inside of the room, and it seemed remarkable to Jill that after such a long period of disregard it could sound so crystal clear. Jill and her captor had reacted strongly to the voice, though their reactions differed radically. Jill had jumped, frightened at first, then hopeful, thinking it was coming from outside and that she was saved, but it sunk in quickly that it was a computerized voice informing the inhabitants of the old facility that they had twenty-four hours of oxygen remaining. _And twenty of those hours are already gone._

Wesker, on the other hand, had visibly cringed, whipping towards the computer and doing everything he could short of punching a hole through it to get the voice to shut up. Jill had supposed that despite himself, he feared Chris and the BSAA's presence just outside the faux rock wall. Once he realized he could not shut the voice up without risking the loss of their oxygen supply, he had resigned himself to pacing the room. Every hour after that, the voice had reminded them of their impending suffocation should they remain where they were. At twelve hours, the voice had begun doing it every half hour, and since six hours had passed, it seemed the voice selected random intervals to break the uncomfortable silence.

Starving and thirsty, Jill sat slumped against the wall absolutely exhausted. There had been half a dozen other ancient looking syringes that Wesker had forced her to take, all of which drew out the rubbery numb feeling. Sleep was something that she was too terrified to allow, feeling the need to keep a watchful eye on Wesker. Instead she had drifted in and out of light dozes, jerking awake anytime she even suspected Wesker may have moved from his position across the room. The injuries she had suffered from the fall had not improved, and the last of the ancient medicine had been used up four hours prior. Jill's leg in particular ached horribly, and she had remained sitting to avoid the discomfort. Her arm throbbed in her makeshift sling, her face was scraped and scabbed, and bruises littered her body; she didn't need to see them to know they were there. The bones inside of ached with every breath, making her suspect more than one rib had cracked. Aside from that, Jill felt dirty. The rain and mud and blood had streaked across her clothing and her face, tangled her hair and gotten under her nails. More often than not, and growing more and more frequently, she kept thinking of the shower in the BSAA headquarters. _It's painful to think about that, and that pain is nothing to do with the fall._

Wesker had spent the days going from impatient pacing of the room, hunched-shouldered studying of the computer, or staring at the security monitors. The silence that had settled was uncomfortable, and the questions that filled Jill's head threatened to spill out at any moment, but she was terrified of voicing them. One thing was certain; Jill could not for anything in the world figure out how or why she was still alive. Seriously injured as she was, the fact that she sat here, breathing and whole, seemed a complete mystery. His plans; everything he had worked for, everything he dreamt of had almost become possible. The death of Chris would have allowed for that, but Jill had stopped it. So why then? _Why am I alive?_

A shiver went through Jill, and it had nothing to do with the cold air that kept circulating the room. The shiver was because of something far more sinister, and that was Jill's ideas of what it was exactly that Wesker was planning to do to her.

"Time remaining: two hours and thirteen minutes."

A reliable, temporally consistent reminder had been on the verge of becoming tolerable. It could be easily ignored, because he had known exactly when it was coming. The first random announcement had almost ruined everything. A small pulse of rage filtered through Wesker, as he stood with his back to Jill, and his eyes trained on the security screens. The rage was controllable, just present. The voice was annoying him, and every time the frequency of announcements increased, the rage threatened just a little bit more to push him over that delicate line in his mind.

Wesker was more than aware that his time waiting down here was limited, and in more ways than one. The BSAA's relentless efforts had ceased suspiciously fast, and Wesker didn't trust the apparently blank screens. Perhaps an optimistic person would say that the BSAA had given up, but Wesker knew them better...knew _him_ better. _That pathetic loyalty would never allow for it._ The thought was savage, and the rage pulsed again. Redfield wouldn't quit so easily, and the fact that Wesker was trapped in here, hiding like some common criminal worked on his nerves more than the electronically generated voice of the old hideaways. Wesker could do nothing but stare at the screens intensely, looking for any hint that the BSAA were still monitoring the outside area. The thought of what he would do should the BSAA be outside when they were forced to leave was not even entertained. All Wesker knew was that he longed for escape from his entrapment.

Pulsing and persistent anger also served to remind Wesker that he needed to leave. The virus that helped make what he was, that enhanced his inhuman abilities was sitting in dozens of syringes in the labs he had been occupying prior to his visit to the Estate. Despite the balance of chemicals he required to force away the negative effects of the virus, the underlying anger had begun to burn, making him sweat and feel claustrophobic in his own skin. Those feelings only served to make him more angry as he had known that killing Spencer would end it. _Should_ have ended it. Feeble, weak, stupid old Spencer who had been foolish enough to think that he could ever hope to control Albert Wesker, dead as he should be, and yet these disgusting feelings kept bubbling to the surface. Wesker clenched his jaw and balled his hands into fists, flexing and releasing, flexing and releasing. _I need those viruses._

The screens gave a promising glow of the outside world, but Wesker had just suffered the constant reminder that he was trapped in here. The BSAA had come back only twice, each time with search and rescue teams, and each time with Chris Redfield. The rage that hovered under it all flowed through his veins in waves each time he saw the brawny soldier. _It was almost over._ The bitter thought seemed to be the only one, shining in clarity over all the underlying musing thoughts of how and where they would leave. Chris' presence outside put Wesker on edge; here he was, hiding like a trapped animal in a cage, while Chris led an army through the canal outside. The only thing that gave him his preferred state of confidence was the small, broken thing which sat slumped in the corner across from him.

_Jill Valentine._ The injuries she had sustained were serious, but not fatal. Wesker could have easily fixed them with the proper medical supplies, but as he neither cared to do so nor was in possession of any, he had refrained to forcing the old medicine into her. It could have been poison, Wesker knew that well enough. Among thoughts of departure and frustration lingered ponderings of why he had saved her. _Simplicity_. Jill's death couldn't come easily, not after the severity of the disruption she had caused to his life. _No, she gave herself to you in sacrifice. You'll figure out what to do with her._

All good things to those who wait.

"Warning; time remaining thirteen minutes."

It was as if Wesker's internal clock was programmed with that voice, the pulsing vibrations in his head making it feel as if the voice were screaming in his ear instead of echoing in the empty room. Thirteen minutes of security was all he had left, and if the monitors were correct, the passage outside remained empty. Wesker wasn't foolish enough to think that meant security all around them, simply that their immediate exit might not be more difficult than it need be. Even if the BSAA had a base camp set up, it wouldn't be at the base where they were. If previous observation was any indication, they were probably established along the top of the long rocky passage, in which case the deep trails hidden under rocky outcrops would conceal the pair as they left. A more concerning possibility was that there was a BSAA camp set up down the rocky passage and away from the estate, and that the BSAA were combing their way inwards. Wesker knew there was a passage that trailed within the rock to a larger facility about an hour's drive from the mansion. Lacking a vehicle was no concern for Wesker, he could make himself move faster than most cars he would be able to acquire nearby, and Jill wouldn't be an issue to carry as he ran. Wesker had found a small gift in the old storage units to help him with that particular problem.

The small syringe containing a dose of heavy sedative in his pocket rested against his hand, fingers tapping against it lightly. Even Wesker had realized how lucky he was to have found this one last piece of help from his temporary prison. It was enough, of that he was sure. It would give him almost twenty-four hours of peace to figure out where he was going and what he'd do when he got there. For now, he needed to be as far away from the mansion as possible, and he needed somewhere to reside. _I've been displaced, and now I need to reassemble the pieces._

"Warning; sixty seconds remaining." Closing his eyes and settling his mind, Wesker slowly slid the syringe out of his pocket and concealed it in his hand, cap off and ready to inject Valentine and leave. Turning and swiftly striding across the room, the voice began steadily counting down seconds. Jill's head jerked towards him and she weakly attempted to struggle to her feet causing Wesker to have to strain not to roll his eyes. 

"What are y-you going to d-" the words were cut off as Wesker pierced her neck with the syringe making her eyes widen, and then her whole body go slack. Making sure all of the sedative was out of the tube, he tossed it to the ground and scooped Jill up effortlessly, her limbs hanging limp and her head lolling against his chest. Moving to where the wall was, Wesker placed a hand on the corner where the door met the hidden frame and waited.

"Ten...nine...eight...seven..." Heart beating steadily, Wesker pictured in his mind where to go and what the lab looked like. "Six...five...four..." there were at least four other usable labs left in the immediate countryside surrounding the estate, and from the farthest one he'd be able to find the database of all of the other ones in Europe. "Three...two...one."

The lab went pitch black, and the steady hum of the air circulatory system went silent, gracing Wesker with absolute silence for the first time in days. Applying pressure to the meeting of materials, the door bent a little, and then bent a lot letting in a cold breeze from beyond. Hearing a few rocks falling off from the manicured outside appearance of the lab, Wesker paused in the opening which was just large enough for him to get through with Jill. It was night outside again, and there were no sounds except for distant wind in the trees, and the air whistling through the passage. Sliding out into the night air, Wesker stood a moment savouring his freedom. Closing his eyes and listening, Wesker concentrated on the long, dark space he planned on running down in front of him and heard nothing. If the BSAA were still here, they weren't active at the moment. Wesker opened his eyes, and _ran_.


	10. Displacement

Medical waste. Everywhere, in every bin and bag and corner; medical waste. If all this medical waste came from the hidden labs, it was a miracle Umbrella hadn't had a catastrophe long before Raccoon City.

_Come to think of it, it's a double miracle after all the labs we've been to._ Jill thought to herself. 

Nearly a month had gone by since the Spencer Estate, and she was well on her way to being healed, or at least as healed as she could be without proper medical attention. At first the discovery of the old medicine vials, needles, and pills had alarmed her because of the idea of how old most of it must have been. More recently her concern had changed when it came to the medicine Wesker scavenged and tossed at her. The labels would read "ibuprofen, penicillin", and Wesker simply ignored her inquiries about the syringes, but it was Umbrella's history that she found cause for concern. Pain killers weren't exactly a specialty of Umbrella's, their pharmaceuticals more focused around the idea of biological mutation and "modification". Deciding the risk was worth more than suffering, Jill accepted the medications but with hesitation, taking as little as she could risk once she started noticing improvements.

Since the swelling in her ankle had gone down and she'd created a makeshift crutch out of an old mop, Jill had a much easier time of limping around, and Wesker made them move more and more frequently. Jill's injuries hadn't caused him much concern, and her discomfort in constantly moving from place to place didn't give him any issue either, she was simply more of a liability moving slowly. If she was too injured looking too many people who saw them may ask questions, and while Wesker didn't think twice about killing a few men here and there to go unbothered, he wasn't naive enough to think that slaughtering groups of people all over Europe would go past the BSAA's tracking abilities.

Over the past month the pair and drifted from building to building, letting Jill see just how deep Umbrella's line of secrets went. Wesker had taken them everywhere, often only stopping to allow her to rest for a few hours here and there. As much as he could, he avoided any other people, which in some cases was as difficult as trying to find where Umbrella's leftovers were. Dozens and dozens of abandoned buildings; under buildings, on residential streets, in the middle of a forest, at an old military base, even a few passages marked by ambiguous doors throughout the small towns and villages they drifted through. Secret doors used for acting out secret means to reach secret ends. Jill wondered how Umbrella had constructed so many hidden labs without raising suspicion. Glancing over at her former captain, Jill had a fleeting consideration of asking him but dismissed the thought, doubting he'd entertain her even to dismiss her question.

Currently the pair were sitting at opposite ends of a long since abandoned laboratory, one of a few rooms linked together under an old factory in Germany. At least, Jill assumed they were now in Germany because she had overheard Wesker speaking rapid German to a few men around the fence which surrounded the factory - before he had killed them. A shiver of guilt went through her - Wesker had only killed the men once they had started pointing at her and yelling. _My fault. How many more people will have to die because of me?_ Anytime someone had begun asking questions about who she was, what Wesker was to her, he would kill him and dispose of the bodies.Only once so far had she considered running away, but watching Wesker kill person after person...no, her escape plan would require weeks of preparation, and a lot more physical recovery. As if to serve as a reinforcement to that knowledge, her side ached and she moved a hand to the place where the bruises and broken ribs were finally beginning to recover. The sound of drawers opening made the young woman look down the length of the room to her captor opposite. Until that point Wesker had been silent, reading pages and pages of old documents and written reports, and now he was yanking drawers and cabinets open, throwing their contents onto the already cluttered desk he had occupied. Jill tensed in her position on the floor, the only chair in the room obviously serving a greater purpose than providing her comfort. She had no papers around her at all, replaced instead by scattered food wrappers and a plastic water bottle.

Sitting frozen as long as Wesker was wrenching open the cupboards, Jill wondered if he had any plan at all. _He must have been doing_ something _before the estate._ Wesker hadn't seemed to be acting with any real sense of urgency to return somewhere, but his mood had grown more tense, and Jill had begun to worry the last week. Jill hadn't bothered trying to speak much to Wesker aside from the occasional "where are we going?", which went unanswered. There must have been something he was looking for, because Wesker was taking her from old Umbrella lab to old Umbrella lab, all of which were abandoned, and had been doing nothing except tossing scraps of food and medicine at her once dumping her in the corner. _Why am I still here?_ After almost a decade, Wesker had finally almost killed Chris, and Jill had been the one to stop him. Surely he was angry at her, and yet there she sat. Damaged but healing, even being fed, watered, and minimally cared for. Once the initial fear and shock had subsided, Jill had stopped hoping the BSAA would find them. Moving them from lab to lab had taken them far, Wesker finding vehicles and speeding down mountain trails night after night.

Deciding that she couldn't keep sitting, Jill heaved herself to a standing position, cautiously looking over at Wesker. _He never said you couldn't move around. He never said anything._ Slowly she began limping around the room, darting paranoid looks to her former captain who hadn't noticed her movement, apparently. Curiosity getting the better of her, she shuffled her way down to the desk, stopping several feet away and staring at the back of his head wearily. Leaning forward she strained to read what any of the papers said, and instead just looked at a bunch of drawings and formulas, none of which made any sense to her. Just as she was studying a photo of a large, leafy plant, a pile of documents landed on the desk directly in front of her, causing her to jump.

"Make yourself useful." Wesker spat, turning back to the filing cabinet he was rifling through. Jill's heart was pounding and she eyed the stuffed folder. _Watch what you say, he's angry about something. And he's...he's..._ Not well, was the rest of the thought, but Jill couldn't figure out what was wrong with him.

"Wh-" a pause, her voice was cracked from barely speaking and she cleared her throat. "What am I looking for, exactly?"

"Anything worth keeping from this waste." His voice was a low hiss, and Jill felt frustrated.

"Okay...but what's worth keeping?" The door to the cabinet was slammed shut with such force that the sound of metal hitting metal was deafening, and door itself dented harshly in the middle. Wesker took a deep breath, his shoulders heaving up and down, and his fists flexing over and over again. He turned slowly to face her, taking a few steps towards her.

"Try the words "evolution", "adaptation", "regeneration", anything that will get me what I want." The words were a harsh growl, and this was the closest to him Jill had been since the fall. Swallowing back a refusal, Jill swiped the folder and took a few unsteady steps backward. His red eyes burned into her for several more seconds before he turned away and sat once again at the table. Taking her small project back to her corner, Jill cautiously lowered herself. Jill didn't want to help him at all, and only wanted to know what he wanted with her, but her curiosity was getting the better of her. Surviving her attempt at sacrifice had instilled a desire to escape and return to Chris and the BSAA, and she was going to do whatever it took to accomplish that. Word-searching in documents wasn't going to give her much to go on, but if she could figure out what Wesker was doing, she could figure out how to escape. And there was something about Wesker that she didn't feel like crossing. It wasn't just that his mood was sour, up close to him like that she could see he _wasn't_ doing very well. His skin was pale, and there had been a sort of heat about him, as if the man were burning up. And the way he had flexed his hand...he had been shaking. _What's wrong with him?_ \------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 

Another waste of a day spent in another useless facility, and the pressure just kept building. _I need to get back to those labs. I need that virus._ Wesker's mind had been rushing with thoughts and ideas since their departure from Spencer's estate. Maybe the entire thing didn't need to be another failed plan thanks to Chris Redfield. Another violent surge of anger pulsed through his body just thinking the name. 

_Chris._

Everything was his fault. Every failed plan, every lost success, it all came back to Chris one way or another. Enough was finally enough and Wesker had to figure out a way to get rid of Chris once and for all. _Not just Chris. Get rid of all of it._ Spencer had been a fool to think himself a god. After all his embarrassments with Umbrella he had no right to make that claim. But something he had said was twisting and twirling within Wesker's mind, a single thing Spencer had said before he died. _A superior breed of humans._ The knowledge that he was something more than human had always been with Wesker, ever since his rebirth during the Arklay Mansion incident. So he had been manufactured by Spencer to be something greater, yet Spencer had thought him a failure. _If he truly created me, then I am Spencer's only true success, and it is up to me to create what he failed to._

_A superior breed of humans._ But how? A god...yes, it would take one to create them, and Spencer's false claim had brought the realization of his own status to Wesker's mind, but how would he use it? How could he create a new world? It could be done, Wesker could do it. Viruses, outbreaks, biological warfare....none of it was enough anymore. Wesker couldn't keep up this facade of petty crime. No, it was time for him to rise above it. But how? _Progenitor virus..._ yes, he knew all about that. That was the key to it, Wesker knew it. A new virus, one to do everything the others had failed, and new strain... _Yes, yes, it all makes sense._ Viral evolution, adaptations to survive...that had been the focus of his work for the last several years and now he had to use it to his advantage. The old Umbrella catalogs had some useful information hidden within their depths, but the usefulness of Umbrella had thoroughly dried out as far as Wesker was concerned. He needed to resume his work at the Tricell labs he had taken over, but even more he needed those viruses to steady his mind. To provide him the strength he required to accomplish this task. Once he had done that, gotten himself back on track, there was one more thing he needed to solve...

Lifting his eyes from the desk to stare down the room at Jill Valentine, his mind continued to turn the idea over and over. _Yes, it can be done._ Chris, Spencer, the BSAA...none of it would matter. It would all be solved. Despite the pain and heat of the imbalance in his body, a horrible, dark smirk formed on his features as he watched the bruised, weak woman going through the papers. _You even have your test subject._

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jill reached the bottom of the pile of papers, having set aside only three or four out of what she guessed to be a hundred. Ignorant as to how much time had passed she gathered the few papers together and sighed, glancing up to look at Wesker. She jumped to discover he was leaning against the wall watching her.

"Found something worthy of my time?"

Jill shrugged. "You didn't give me much to go on." The smirk on his features was getting to her, his calmness unnerving.

"Get up. We're leaving." Turning abruptly back to the table, Wesker swiped the folder he had decided to take with him and went back to Jill dropping them on top of the few things she had managed to turn up. Daring her to protest, he watched and she slowly gathered them and rose to her feet, glaring at him.

"Go where? We've been wandering for months. What do you want with me?" Wesker replied with a maddening chuckle.

"All good things to those who wait, Ms. Valentine." The words sounded like a taunt. "Be a good girl and make this easy for yourself. You're too weak to try running, and I have no real problem with breaking your leg again. We won't be walking anywhere anymore." A pause and he gave her a thoughtful stare. "Well, even if your legs are in tact you won't be going anywhere either way." Jill's heart flew into her throat, and she wanted to fight him, to stop him, to get away from whatever it was he was going to do to her.

Taking long strides towards the door Wesker exited the building, letting in a cold draft of air causing Jill to shiver. Anxiously she hoisted the stack of papers under one arm, and used her mop-crutch with the other to limp quickly past Wesker and out into the night. The door to the old facility clicked shut behind them and Wesker took a look around them, the light of the moon making him seem pale, and illuminated the perspiration on his forehead despite the cold air. _He's sick._ Jill pondered again. Despite the fear and resilience nestled within her, Jill didn't see how she could even try to do anything besides what he ordered her to. Once he realized the area was secure, he began striding off towards the fence, Jill in tow. Once outside the perimeter, he paused, and then began walking towards the forest.

Feeling hopeless and afraid, Jill fell in step behind, wondering where they were going and what Wesker possible could have meant. One thing settled in her mind, and the thought terrified her despite having no way of knowing for sure it was true. Albert Wesker had figured out a plan.


	11. Moving On

The night was alive with the sounds of bugs and wind whistling in the trees, but Jill couldn't enjoy even a second of it. The makeshift splint around her leg was digging in painfully, but she couldn't walk without it and kept dropping papers from the stack she was being made to carry. Frustration was seeping through her that she was so helpless to defend herself against Wesker and unable to even attempt to escape him. Currently he walked several paces ahead of her, but was still close enough to grab her if she tried anything. Twice he had paused to look around, and although Jill never noticed anything out of the ordinary in the thick woods, Wesker seemed to spot what he was looking for every time they stopped. A turn here, a turn there, and finally the pair emerged into a large field, illuminated in shades of grey by the moon which hung overhead.

"Stay." Wesker ordered, without bothering to turn to face her. Nervously Jill looked around, unsure about what to expect and still uneasy about whatever Wesker was planning to do with her. Taking long strides across the field, he became nothing but a black shadow before disappearing into the dark on the other side.

Jill stood shivering, unable to see or hear Wesker, and trying to reason what was about to happen. From somewhere in the dark in front of her, she heard what sounded like something being dropped on the ground. Wondering briefly what he was doing, Jill sized up their surroundings and weighed her options. _Running wouldn't work, your leg is throbbing and I bet your ankle is swollen again._ Fighting him wasn't an option either. Even if Jill was in peak condition, based on what she had seen of him at the Spencer Estate she wouldn't last five minutes alone in a fight with him. A gentle breeze ruffled her hair, and she shivered again, wondering briefly what Chris was doing and where he was. An ache moved through her the second his face entered her mind. _No, don't think about him. Don't. It will only make this harder._ The helplessness that had been plaguing her came back and she felt tears fill her eyes.

The earth beneath her feet gave her a sudden jolt back into the present moment, and a deep rumbling began somewhere in front of her. Startled, Jill took several steps backwards, swaying on her leg as a wave of pain went through her. Wesker appeared near by, and was watching the field in front of them. The ground shifted and started pulling itself apart right down the middle, and Jill felt confused as to what was happening. Red lights were blinking from within the ground, and she realized that what she thought was the earth was actually two large, steel doors sliding open to reveal a dark circle with a staircase spiraling down. Not far into the hole, sat a large, black helicopter on a landing pad. Stunned at how perfect it looked, Jill again found herself marveling at the extent to which Umbrella had spread itself throughout the world with all its secret hideaways. _And I bet Wesker knows where every single one is._ Once the large doors were fully open, Wesker gave her a shove that sent her stumbling painfully towards the stair case.

"After you, Ms. Valentine." Panic seeped into her at the idea of them flying away together. _No, no...at least we're still in Europe and there's a chance Chris can find you._ Jill hesitated, turning to face him, defiance flaring up inside of her.

"Where are we going?" Wesker's jaw clenched at her refusal to move and he took a step towards her. Fear and anger at being kept a prisoner swelled up inside of her and she pitched the file of papers at him as hard as she could. He dodged it easily, and several simply fluttered to the ground doing nothing at all to hurt him. "Tell me what you want from me, or I'm not going anywhere with you!"

Grabbing her arm, Wesker pulled her along behind him, hurting her. It wasn't the arm that had been in the sling until recently, but it hurt all the same from the sheer force with which he was dragging her. Screaming as loud as she could Jill struggled weakly, but Wesker was far too strong and he shoved her roughly into the back of the helicopter, disappearing and then reappearing with remarkable speed, throwing the file in behind her and slamming the door shut. Struggling to her feet she scrambled to the door to try and get out, but Wesker was too fast.

"I was going to show mercy and use the last of the sedative, but I've changed my mind." She whipped around to face him, and was met with a hard blow that slammed her against the wall of the helicopter and knocked her out cold.

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The helicopter flew smoothly, and Wesker left the side panel open to let in the cold air. It was almost therapeutic in the way it flooded the cabin of the 'copter. Jill Valentine had been dumped unceremoniously on the floor in the latched cargo hold, unconscious but alive much to Wesker's ongoing wonder that he hadn't killed her. The sheer frustration of being prevented from ridding himself of Chris Redfield alone should have made him kill the woman. It wouldn't have taken much, her lying at the bottom of the canyon broken and alone; all he would have needed to do was snap her neck and it would have been over. The blonde found himself wondering vaguely if that wouldn't have been better with all the pain it would have caused Redfield to find her that way.

_No, you need her. Use her for something better. Use her against him._

The thoughts were a swirling mass in Wesker's head, all of them blurring in and out. He had never gone so long without the viral mixture he regularly injected himself with to keep the balance of chemicals in check. It wasn't weakness but a precaution; a way for Wesker to perfect himself without needing to be concerned about petty, human disease. Feeling the reds of his eyes burning against the increasing brightness in the sky Wesker hit the autopilot control and rose to his feet, moving to the open side of the 'copter and stared out of it not really seeing anything at all. Mindless thoughts of the virus, of Jill, of Spencer, of the Progenitor circled in his head creating a mosaic of images and words, none of it making any sense. Dizzy, cloudy thoughts that Wesker could not dispel, with the one solid notion hovering about them all; a superior breed of humans. _You._ Evolution. Only the strong survive. Adaptation. _Only one survived..._ The mess of thoughts was making his already clouded mind feel hot and confined. In fact all he felt was hot and confined and trapped. He hated it. The itching of his skin with the constant trembling reminded him just how much he needed those viruses to be under control. But that didn't matter. No, it didn't matter because he made them. Anything he created and used was just an extension of himself; of his mind. _Birkin would have understood. Birkin always understood._ The thought of William Birkin seemed so foreign to Wesker since it had been years since the name had even surfaced in his mind for any real reason. Shaking himself, Wesker went back to the controls having recognized that based on the thinning trees ahead, he had almost arrived at his destination.

Resuming his position at the controls, he reached up and unhooked the radio, turning on the signal and calling ahead down to the lab. A static response of acknowledgement came back, and a few moments later Wesker began the helicopter's descent to the landing pad that was enclosed behind a large, metal fence. Several of the researchers from inside stood outside as the large black aircraft lowered onto the ground, coming to a gentle rest, Wesker turning the whole thing off. The head scientist, Emmanuel Popov, scurried over to Wesker taking the folder the he shoved out towards him. Ordering the doctor to leave him, Popov nodded without looking at him and ran, demanding in hurried Russian that the other scientists resume their work.

_Pathetic._ Wesker thought with disgust watching him go. They were all afraid of him demonstrating just how useless and weak they really were. But Wesker couldn't be too put off by it. After all, fear bred obedience which gave Wesker power, and power was all he needed. Shivering, Wesker felt disgusted at the dizziness he felt and the pulse of desire in his blood to get inside and get the virus. When was the last time he had injected it? Almost a month ago, it must have been. Only one last thing kept him from returning inside his lab. his viruses, and his work. Turning and striding to the side of the helicopter, Wesker stepped up and inside and glared down at Jill. Perhaps if she'd simply been sedated he'd have allowed her to remain unconscious, but she had frustrated him and he no longer felt like carrying her useless weight around. _Not useless. You are keeping her for a purpose. Nothing you do is useless, it all feeds a purpose._ The thought like an internal reminder of Wesker's newly found sense of self. He gave her a swift kick to the stomach, the woman jolting into consciousness with a gasp.

"Get up." Looking up at him and looking blearily past him at the daylight, he held back the urge to kick her again and instead opted for reaching down and yanking her to her feet, causing her to cry out. Pulling backwards, Wesker tightened his grip around the arm he knew must still be tender from its time spent healing in a sling. How easily he could break it again should he want, but he did not. A damaged test subject would be of no use, and he needed her for more than one reason.

"Get...off...me!" Struggling against his grip she nearly fell entirely out of the helicopter, and stumbled into his side as he yanked her to the ground with him. Frustrated and disgusted with her, he shoved her away hard, so that she stumbled a few feet in front of him.

"Walk. And don't dare try to run, there's no where for you to go and I will not tolerate any more disobedience." Her arm throbbing painfully, her still sore ankle aching, Jill turned reluctantly and limped towards a large, solid looking door with a keycard reader for a lock. Wesker followed close behind, snatching a card from a zippered pocket and swiping it at the doorway. Before leaving the courtyard, Jill turned and scanned her eyes across the entire thing, looking for a potential way out. _If I'm being locked away in here with Wesker, I need to know where I am and what's around me._ Frustration filled her when she saw the large enclosed space seemed to be exclusively for the helicopter, with the walls too high to even see treetops around them. The air was cold, and Jill shivered in the dirty, torn clothes she still wore; all that was left of her BSAA uniform. Listening above the sound of the doors sliding open, she could hear no external noise surrounding the complex. She also saw no trace of an Umbrella logo anywhere. The sound of the door thudding fully open caused her attention to be turned back to the labs, with Wesker standing by the open door, and gestured impatiently for her to get inside.

Limping past Wesker as quickly as she could Jill stopped inside of the building and was thankful for the comfortable warmth that greeted her. Inside was a long hallway, and tall ceilings. Stark white contrasted with steel grey and metal tables decorated with computers and people wearing lab coats. _The main floor of a lab yes, but..._ Three shapes of dark green, light green, and sky blue came together on the wall so large it took up most of the space which Jill recognized instantly as Tricell. _Of course. Umbrella is dead so he had to have the next best thing._ The BSAA had always been weary of Tricell but never had any solid evidence with which to use against them. Frustration settled over Jill at the idea of getting all of this first hand knowledge through Wesker's presence and yet was unable to share any of it with the BSAA...or with Chris. _Chris._ Sadness mingled with the frustration she felt as Wesker led her through the large room. Several of the people glanced away as he neared them, with others giving curious looks to her. _I must be a sight to behold...how long has it been since I had a shower?_ It was a trivial thought, but seemed oddly heavy on top of everything else she had going through her mind.

Paying no attention to anyone else in the large main lobby of the building, Wesker continued his long, brisk strides through the room until he reached the wide elevator doors at the opposite end. Swiping the keycard again, a small _ding_ signaled the opening of the doors. Wesker turned and looked back at Jill waiting for her to enter before him. Jill _really_ didn't want to share the elevator alone with Wesker, nor did she want to go down, the only way the elevator could go since the building on the outside had only been one story tall. Gulping and taking a desperate look around her, she stepped hesitantly into the small space, followed by Wesker who swiped the keycard for a third time, followed by pressing one of the buttons higher up on the panel. Frantically, Jill try to count how many buttons up it was, or...down, she supposed, but couldn't because they had no indication of what each one was, not even a number. Almost as though he knew what she was trying to do, Wesker shifted his body so that it covered the panel and almost sneered down at her. Despite the pallid look about his face, he still took enjoyment out of knowing Jill was utterly helpless to him. And she would be for as long as Wesker wanted. And as long as Wesker needed her. Knowing this as well, Jill watched, helpless tears forming in her eyes as the door slid shut, and they began their descent.

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Inside of the BSAA European headquarters office, Chris Redfield sat in his silent room with his head in his hands, and his elbows propped on his knees. A dull ache was radiating away from both points of contact from having sat in the same position for too long, but Chris remained still. Barry Burton was out in the information room with Claire Redfield, who had dutifully flown from Terra Save HQ to be with Chris and lend her help. Teams of investigators had brought up nothing regarding the whereabouts of Jill Valentine, and every day the outlook got a bit grimmer. Three hours ago Chris had been approached by the Captain in charge of the London Office, where they currently sat. His words had started clearly but had become nothing but dull mumbles the more he spoke. 

...even if she is alive somewhere, declaring her legally dead will help dispel unwanted attention from other parties who may have interest in her...a very prominent BSAA figure...bioterrorist target...very little chance she survived...

A funeral was being set for the following weeks some time. Chris neither knew nor cared about the details, and was debating even going. Growing angry at the BSAA's slack regarding the search for his partner was making him impatient and agitated. After Chris had stormed away, Barry had remained to finish the conversation with the captain and had tried to come and explain it to Chris.

"Look, buddy, they aren't saying they're going to act as if she's dead, they want it to make people believe she's dead so the search can continue on in private. Then, y'know, they can continue as long as you want to..."

But Chris hadn't wanted to listen. Hearing everyone continuously refer to announcing Jill Valentine as dead was making him want to vomit up the little food he'd managed to eat. Snapping at Barry to just leave him alone, he had dropped down onto his bed and taken the position he currently sat in. His thoughts were swimming, the only clear idea being that Jill couldn't be dead. Wesker had taken her, _had_ to have taken her. That's the only reason neither of their bodies were there. _That doesn't make any sense...where could they have gone so fast?_ Images floated in Chris's mind of just how fast Wesker had been able to move...it wasn't entirely a ridiculous thought.

After what felt like hours, a light knock came from his door and he knew it was his sister. Not responding or moving, the knock came again, followed by his name.

"Alright, Chris. I'm coming in so if you don't have pants on, get under the covers." A beat, and then the door slowly opened. Chris lifted his head, and looked through cloudy vision at his red-headed sister. His eyes ached from being pressed against his palms for so long, and his right leg had fallen asleep. Shuffling over on the bed so she could sit down, he sighed and looked around at the messy state his room was in.

"Look, I know this is hard for you. It's hard for me too. And Barry. God, Chris, Barry's known her as long as you have." Dropping down onto the bed, she folder her feet under herself and sat cross legged. Chris grunted, and turned to look out of the window. If anyone was going to make him face up to the reality of what he was going to, it was going to be Claire. Bossy, always-right, stubborn, baby Claire. _And you know she's always right, too._

"I know...I know it's not the same. The friendship I have with her, the history Barry does...I know that you had Jill had something more." A hand was put on his shoulder, and he squeezed his hand into a fist to stop from shoving it off. "But look, you can't just keep pretending like Jill's gone away on a vacation and she's going to come back. There's every possibility that she'll never--"

"I know that Claire. I know there's every possibility she is dead. But I know she isn't." Yanking his arm out from under Claire's hand he got to his feet and began pacing, hearing a patient sigh from Claire behind him. "I know that regardless of whether she's dead or not, I'll probably never see her again." His voice faltered at that, and he turned around, squeezing his eyes closed. "I know that I lost my partner that day, no matter what happened to her."

"That doesn't mean we're going to stop looking. That doesn't mean you should give up on her..."

"...but?"

He head Claire get to her feet, and felt her hand on his shoulder again. He let her have it there that time.

"But...you have to start realizing that Jill just isn't here anymore. Whether that's forever, or just for a while, you can't just stop working and functioning. Jill wouldn't have wanted that." Chris didn't respond or make any motion to stop her, so she continued on. "I know it's hard losing someone that you...that you care about. And not knowing whether or not they're even alive." Her voice cracked slightly, and Chris turned to face her. Brave faced as always, Chris saw a small sadness lingering in her eyes and knew she was remembering the Antarctic and Steve from all those years ago.

"You're right." Sighing, he reached out and embraced Claire, giving her a tight hug. The pair didn't hug frequently, but Chris always felt better after talking to Claire. It had always been that way, ever since they had been kids. Pulling apart, Claire left her hands on his shoulders, smiling up at him weakly.

"And besides, with the BSAA's resources pooled together with what TerraSave is doing, if Jill's out there we're going to find her." Chris wished he could believe that more than anything. The heavy feeling in his chest had moved to his stomach where it settled. Not heaviness, maybe...but emptiness. Loneliness. Just knowing that the one person he'd known his whole life wasn't with him...

"When's the funeral supposed to be?"


	12. Make A Plan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jill Valentine gets used to her new life with Wesker, but that hasn't stopped her will to fight. She's more focused than ever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm aliiiiiiiiiive. To anyone who reads only this work of mine, I am sorry. I didn't forget this fic, i just...lost motivation. I've been focusing on my other stuff, and ended up letting this fall aside. But I'm back! I have the next four chapters spread out, so I promise not to disappear for months again. Anyways, enough rambling. Hope you all enjoy this chapter!

_Tick tick tick._

The constant rounds of the hand on the clock made Jill think of every exam she had ever taken, where the only real difference between that sound and this was that now she sat on a lumpy, plastic mattress in a cold room as opposed to a hard plastic chair in a stuffy one. _Maybe the clock is just a way of torturing you._ With only a rough guess as to what day it was when she'd been brought in here, Jill had even less of an idea now. The clock meant nothing to her in this cell with no windows. She slept when she was tired, although she thought she was keeping to a schedule. Watching the hands on the clock tick by, Jill wondered if the time was even right. She wondered if time even mattered at all anymore.

_Of course time matters. A bit of time means the BSAA may still be looking for you. A lot of time means they've given up._ Old but familiar hopelessness filled her at the thought, and she struggled to keep tears out of her eyes. Clearing her throat and standing up, Jill began leaping up and down doing jumping jacks. After that, crunches. Then squats, then burpees, then jogging in place. One thing she knew for sure about time is that enough of it had passed for her to feel recovered from her fall out of the window. Or at least recovered enough that she could do what little training she was able to in her given space. If she sat still for too long, or lay down for more than a few hours, her ankle began throbbing and her sides ached. Doing these exercises made her feel normal; made her feel sane. Under her breath she counted the jumps, _twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three_ all the way to fifty. Back at the BSAA, she and Chris had endlessly run training drills. Before the estate, she'd begun to teach Chris how to pick locks, and he'd begun teaching her how to be a better shot. Feeling tears threatening again, she dropped to the floor, hooked her feet under the mattress on the bed, and began doing crunches. _Four, five, six..._ The days had been sliding by with no more information than she'd received the first day she'd gotten here with Wesker. And Wesker...him she hadn't seen since she had been shoved through the door of this small, boxy room.

The room truly was small, and up until Jill occupied it, it had been used as a holding room for people deemed a threat to the secrecy of the company. Instead of killing them, Wesker had been ordering they be set aside for "experimental purposes". Jill however was oblivious to this, and instead inherited the room thinking Wesker had it made up into a prison cell just for her. There was no furniture except for a metal table, a metal chair, and the metal framed bed with the hard, plastic mattress along with two pillows and two sheets. One sheet Jill had pulled tight around the mattress, and the other, thicker one she used as a blanket since the room was always a temperature she found just slightly below what she could find comfortable. In the corner closest to the door was a toilet, and a roll of paper was brought to her every other morning, or at least what she thought of as morning since it was always there when she woke up. Beside the toilet on the wall was a sink, but no mirror, and only cold water came out of it. A long, rectangular light fixture hung from the ceiling, but she had no way of turning the light off, and the door was solid metal and as far as she could tell could only be opened from the outside by a key-card. Pushing herself to her feet, she began her squats, exhaling each time she lowered herself over her knees.

Upon her first day in this room, the first thing Jill had done was rifle through it several times, combing over every surface, running her fingers under the bedframe, chair, and table. Lifting the toilet lid, even attempting to pull the sink off of the wall looking for something, anything that she'd be able to use as a weapon or a lockpick. Finding nothing, she at first had done nothing but sit against the door with her ear pressed to it, listening for any hint that would tell her what was happening on the other side, or what was going to happen to her. The only contact she had was a strict faced woman who brought her food and a water jug three times a day, and a man who served as security and armed with a rifle that stood and made sure Jill didn't try anything. She'd tried desperately to speak to them, but whether they didn't understand her, chose to ignore her or both Jill didn't know. Fleeting glimpses outside of her door let her see it was a door part of a long hallway, and from somewhere she could hear loud talking and beeping, as if she were in a computer lab or something. Leaping off of her feet and then dropping to do a plank, Jill began her burpees, the most painful part of her exercises but the one she felt helped her recover the best.

The food brought to her was bland and simple, presented on a tray or in small plastic containers that made her think of a cafeteria. Pudding, mashed potatoes, dry chicken, soggy green beans, none of the food gave her any indication as to where she was. Picking at it, her stomach growled throughout each day and she began to eat all of it just to stop feeling so hungry all of the time. What she looked forward to the most was the cold melon she got each morning for what she considered breakfast. _I guess I do have a decent understanding of time, if they actually bring my food when they're supposed to._ What concerned her the most was that she hadn't showered properly since she'd been there and the exercises she made herself do certainly did nothing to maintain her hygiene. Instead of a shower she'd resorted to cleaning herself as best she could using water in the sink and the bar of soap they left for her. _Whatever he's going to do to me, it's going to be soon, he doesn't give a shit what I look or smell like, but he's feeding me and keeping me alive, which is a bad sign. Like cattle, like...like a test subject..._ The thought wasn't a new one, but it managed to bring a great deal of distress to her mind any time it arose. Just before the thought could finish manifesting itself and she could move on to her jogging for the day, the door beeped and slid open.

"Come with us." A heavily accented voice, and the first time she'd heard the stern faced woman speak. The man was there and gestured with his rifle for Jill to step out of the room. Heart pounding from her workout and from the sudden new event happening in her newly tedious, stressful life, she paused, chest heaving and sizing them both up.

"Where are you taking me?"

"No question. You come with us, no disobedience." The words were clipped and sharp. _Hmmm, German? No, not German. Maybe...Russian? It was freezing outside, maybe Russia. Oh god, could we really be in Russia?_ Not really seeing any other option, Jill suddenly realized this was her chance to scope out the lab. Getting a handle on the layout could help tell her where the communications equipment was, where the exit was...she'd finally make progress on escaping. Taking cautious steps, she walked in between the stern woman and the man with the gun, following them down the hallway her room was located in. It _did_ look a bit like a hospital, but then laboratories usually did. At the end of the hallway were the elevator doors, with the two hallways leading off in either direction from where the three hallways met. Instead of getting on the elevator, she was guided down the hallway to the right, walking past several hallways each with a few doors scattered along the walls. At the end of the hallway, the woman led Jill into what turned out to be a large washroom, and Jill realized what she had walked past were most likely dorms or something. Jill followed the woman around to a row of very clean showers, and pointed at the one on the end.

"Fifteen minute. You try nothing." Turning on her heel, the woman left Jill there. Walking tentatively and quietly around the bathroom, she saw the only exit was the one where the man with the gun stood, and she sighed to herself. _As if anything is ever that easy._ Walking back over to the shower stall, she found a clean pair of clothes on the ground, only having been given one change of clothes since she'd been there. The clothing was black cotton pants and a grey shirt with white socks. They each fit a bit loosely, but Jill shrugged. Her boots she'd been somehow allowed to keep, although they were worn and tattered and filthy. On top of the clothes was a large white towel, and inside the shower were three bottles but no razor. _Of course._ She thought dully. Although stubbly legs weren't at the top of her priority list, if she was stuck here for a while it really wouldn't kill Wesker to give her the necessities. _Besides, I seriously doubt that I'd be able to do much to him with a women's razor._ Pulling open the curtain, Jill turned the water on until it was perfectly warm, looked self-consciously behind her, and stripped, stepping into the water. It felt so relaxing to just stand in the heat, that it was all she did for several minutes. Not wanting the man or woman to come in and get her, she hurriedly used the soaps and shampoos, lathering it as thickly as possible since she didn't know when she'd be afforded this privilege again. Finishing, she turned off the water and dried off as quickly as she could, pulling her clothes around her and squeezing all of the water out of her hair. Wandering to the mirror, she took a quick look at herself before the woman came and barked "Let's go."

Following the woman, she gathered her dirty clothes under one warm and held the towel and shampoo bottles in the other. Unsure whether or not she could keep all the things she'd been provided, she assumed she could when the woman didn't snatch them away from her. She was led back down the hallway and struggled to see more of the part of the facilities where she was being kept, but it was useless. The pair hurried her along and she wasn't able to see much except the closed rooms she assumed to be dorms, and another hallway with closed doors down the other hallway by the elevator. Further down the hallway her room was located on, it looked as if there was a large open area that expanded beyond where Jill could see but she came to a halt before she could walk any further. Turning to see why they had stopped, Jill's heart did a violent jolt against her chest when she saw Wesker standing in wait in front of her door. The man and woman who had escorted her were staring stiffly at him.

"Take those." Gesturing to the small gathering of things Jill held in his arms, the woman snatched them from her and slipped nervously past Wesker to throw them into her room. "Leave us."

Before Jill could begin forming the words to ask what he was doing here, the woman and man both nodded and darted off as quickly as possible. Jill watched as they walked as fast as they could to the elevator, and eagerly stepped on, the look in their eyes as the doors slid closed was one with which Jill could easily relate to; fear. _God, they're terrified of him._ Turning back to face Wesker, Jill felt incredibly vulnerable with her damp hair and flimsy cotton clothing.

"Follow me, Miss Valentine." Gesturing down the opposite end of the hallway, Jill thought passingly that she could see the rest of this area after all. _But why, what does he want, where is he taking me?_ Cautiously, Jill began to wander with Wesker falling in step beside her, walking tall and stiff as he always did. _And always had..._ A distant memory of her S.T.A.R.S. years passed through her mind, but that was so long ago and so much had happened since then. So many had died. _Because of him_.

"Where are we going? What do you want with me?" Watching him carefully, Jill readied herself to run, to fight, to do anything to protect herself that she could from him. _At least he's not feverish and shaking anymore._ In all honesty, Wesker looked very well actually. Tall and broad-shouldered, he was equally as intimidating walking along beside her as he was when she and Chris first saw him at the Spencer Estate. Coming out into the open area, Jill saw it was another area with computers, although few scientists were here. The people working here looked more like... _communications officers_ her heart leaping into her chest. _So close!_ In the centre of the room was a large staircase leading up and down. Wesker veered towards the stairs heading down, and Jill followed.

"Really, Miss Valentine. Do you believe I'm going to share all of my plans with you?" Smirking and _tsk_ ing at her, he shook his head slightly. "And here I thought you were among the more intelligent BSAA operatives." A dull rage flared in Jill's chest. _Don't. Don't give him the satisfaction._ Once they reached the bottom of the stairs, Wesker directed her through a large set of double doors with Russian above them, and the translation beside them: Medical. _The medical wing?_ Here there were doctors walking around, walls with charts and white boards, all with Russian written across them. Jill realized with some distress that even if she did manage to get herself alone with a communications server, it would only be in Russian and she'd be as stuck as if she wasn't near it at all. Walking down the hallway, they came to a large door with a black scanner along the wall. Reaching into his pocket, Wesker pulled out a swipe card and the doors beeped, a green light following the smooth sound of the door sliding open. Stepping cautiously through the door, Jill saw it looked like a regular examination one, quite similar to the ones at the BSAA hospitals. The sound of the door sliding cleanly shut behind them made her jump, and Wesker was walking over to the cabinet and pulling a number of things out.

"What are you gonna do to me?" Panicked, Jill looked at the door but couldn't see how to open save for another black paneled card reader. And the key, that was in Wesker's pocket. _No chance in hell._ The thought was one of defeat, but being in a medical room with Albert Wesker terrified her more than she would ever have admitted, even to Chris. Not turning to face her, Jill heard Wesker sigh and continue removing things from the cabinet.

"It is quite tiring, Jill, to hear the same question repeated every time you open your mouth. Sit." It was an order, but Jill was _really_ not about to just go over to the medical table and sit down. Looking all around the room, she didn't see any alternative and couldn't see anything that would be an effective weapon against him either. Taking a few hesitant steps towards the table, she didn't get on top of it but rather stood on the other side of it, positioning it between her and Wesker.

"Maybe if you'd just answer me I'd stop asking." She said, bravely. Turning, Wesker organized a number of things on the small metal table. Among them was a blood pressure monitor, one of those instruments used to look in your ear and mouth...and a syringe. An empty syringe, but a syringe all the same. Eyeing these things, Jill remained standing, as defiant as she could be while Wesker gave her a level stare.

"I assume at some point during your... _illustrious_ career that you've been subjected to a standard medical examination." Reluctantly Jill nodded, her eyes still shooting from the table with the equipment and back up to Wesker. "There's your answer. Now, sit. I will not order you again."

"You're...just going to give me a check-up?" She didn't believe him, not for one second. But looking at all of the instruments Wesker had laid out on the table showed her nothing suspicious, except for the empty syringe. Sliding around to the other side of the table, she half-sat, half-perched on the edge of the table as Wesker organized the instruments, turning to face her. Holding his gaze for a moment, she sighed, heaving herself up on the table the rest of the way. _There's zero point in trying to do anything. Besides, be good and maybe you'll find out more about where you are and how to get out of here._ Slipping the blood pressure monitor around her arm, she flinched away at his touch and he chuckled at her.

"Still not comfortable around me, Jill? After all the time we've known each other." Scowling at him, she winced as the band got tighter and tighter around her arm. Reading and filing the information away in his mind, he removed it and went on to look in her ears and mouth. Being so close to Wesker in such a normal type of environment was unsettling to her. _Being held a prisoner at a bioterrorism lab somewhere in Russia is normal?_ Pulling away from her and pushing the used instruments aside, Wesker took a hold of her hand and held his fingers to her wrist. His grip was tight, but not so tight that she couldn't yank free... "Take off your shirt." Jill jumped at the order.

" _What?!_ " The idea of making herself _that_ vulnerable to him...no, no she refused. "No!" Wesker took a breath and gave her a hard stare, his jaw clenching.

"You sustained numerous broken bones, including a number of broken ribs when you decided to throw yourself out of a window. I can't properly examine you to ensure they've healed correctly with your shirt in the way. Now, take it off."

"I said _no_. I'm not just---" Before Jill could react, Wesker's hand was around her throat, and he slammed her backwards and down against the table. Her hands uselessly grabbing at his arm, she struggled to breath, tears springing to her eyes in pain and shock at what he was doing, and if there were any bones that had been broken in her body, they at once began to ache.

"Do not," Wesker growled, leaning in so close that it made Jill's heart hammer in her chest, "believe that because I have allowed you to live that you are not still expendable to me. I chose to do this while you were conscious, but I can just as easily accomplish what I want while you're asleep." Fear leapt into Jill's heart at his words, mingling with the fear and pain that he was already causing her. "When I tell you to do something, you _do_ it. Or I will do it for you."

Holding on a moment longer, he released her with a slight shove so that her head hit the table. Gasping, and struggling to see past the black spots that had begun forming in her eyes, Jill panted for breath, rubbing her throat and coughing as she did so. Pushing herself up after a moment, Wesker was shoving the tools back into the cabinet, and with shaking fingers Jill slipped her shirt up and over her head, clinging it to her chest and panting.

"You're fucking _evil._ " She spat at him, not caring if it earned her a slap or a shove across the room. Instead, Wesker chuckled as if moments before he hadn't been ready to kill her.

"And you are finally doing as you're told. Now sit up straight." Moving around behind her, Wesker began prodding and feeling along each of her ribs, up and down her back. In complete contrast to the iron grasp on her throat, his touch was gentle and medical in the methodical way he felt along her spine. A tear of anger rolled down her cheek, and she raised a still shaking hand to wipe it away, not wanting him to see her crying. Not wanting to give him the satisfaction. The room was cold, and small bumps had raised all up and down her arms at the feeling of the cold air against her skin. Hearing a small sound of approval from behind her, Wesker's hand left her back and she heard him walk around the table. "You can put that back on." He said, gesturing at the crumpled shirt she held against her. Waiting until he had his back to her, she quickly yanked the shirt up and over her head.

"A-am I done?" Rubbing her hand lightly against her throat, she wondered if any bruises would appear. Turning to face her with the syringe Wesker grabbed her arm, yanked it straight, and inserted the needle into the crook of her arm before she could react. "Hey!" But before she could do anything, he drew a full syringe of her blood and removed it. Lifting it up and examining it against the light, he gave a small, approving grin.

"Now you are."

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Days turned into weeks, and Jill fell into a routine much different from her life at the BSAA. Every day she would do her workout, and after what she had counted as almost four weeks, was allowed to roam about the computer lab as long as the stern faced woman was in the room. There wasn't much to do and she wasn't allowed to touch the computers, but she was allowed to flip through some books. Most of them were in Russian, but she found a few in English about various topics surrounding virology and bacterial evolution. It was very wordy and didn't provide her with much information, but it was something to do. The walks to the showers and the three times daily visits from the stern faced woman were also routine, and Jill even managed to find out her name was Polina. Still not overly friendly, the woman at least had begun to answer Jill's questions with one worded answers, but still managed to provide Jill with the knowledge she needed to begin planning the layout of the building. Innocent questions about whether or not there were animals here, if Wesker had been here long, what the woman knew about his past. Her facial reactions told Jill all she needed to know when it came to questions about Wesker. Jill began getting weekly visits form Wesker too, each week he took her down to the medical room and did the same exam he had done the first time. The tense anxiety eased at his suspicious lack of variation, and Jill couldn't help but wonder what exactly he was checking for with her. _Or what he thinks could make there be any change._

As Jill fell into her routine while the weeks got away, Chris Redfield fell into a routine as well, but his was much different from Jill's. After so long without her, the longest Chris had ever gone now that he thought about it, he had begun filtering in other activities for the BSAA into his daily review of all information surrounding Jill. To say he continued looking for her was not entirely correct, instead he continued looking for clues to allow him to continue looking for her. Grim determination and perseverance replaced the heart-broken desperation that had followed Jill's disappearance, but a visit from his captain informed him that they were rapidly approaching the three month mark since her disappearance, which also meant her funeral.

"Formality, Redfield. But all the same, it will be a serious event." As if Chris needed reminding of _that_. He dreaded it, because it wasn't just a formality. It was a symbolic implication by the BSAA that Jill Valentine was missing in action and presumed dead. _Dead..._ It just wasn't something Chris had ever thought he'd believe about Jill. Jill Valentine couldn't be dead, she was his partner, they'd been through so much together... _dead_. A half-formed idea at the back of Chris' mind that Wesker was holding her captive haunted him and stopped him from fully focusing on anything else. As much as he didn't want to believe it, he knew that after her funeral, after the symbolic action of putting her to rest, he'd have to accept it. He'd have to let go of the idea that they were going to find Jill because he couldn't find anything new. All of the leads he had so carefully dug up and pursued had faded or come to abrupt halts, and the only person who still acted with any sense of belief in him was Claire.

The funeral itself came and went with Chris donning a stiff, stuffy suit and having to endure handshake after handshake. Some men saluted him, women and men alike hugged him and offered condolences, grim discussions and false optimism were held in the conversations with other branch officers. The BSAA gave Chris the remainder of the week off, but he refused. Despite his missing partner, there was work that needed to be done. _And Jill would kill me if she knew I was putting innocent lives in danger because I was worried about her._ He needed to trust that if Jill was alive, that she was able to take care of herself.

At the exact moment the empty casket was being lowered into the ground, Jill Valentine was getting yet another syringe of blood drawn. These 'donations' had begun happening one every two weeks, and no amount of questioning brought her any closer to her answer. Wesker was coldly distant most of the time, going about his work, ignoring her inquisitions, trading her back and forth with Polina. While Chris was shaking another pair of rough hands, Jill was back in her room, the medical exam having happened in the morning instead of the afternoon. While this slight change in scheduling wasn't much to go on, Jill made a list of possibilities in her head as to why the time of her exam and the time of her shower-trip would switch. Her workout had grown, and she'd begun coming up with new drills to run with herself to both keep her alert, and save her from the monotonous insanity of boredom.

_Need to get out of here. Need a plan._ Her best thinking was done while she was leaping into the air before dropping down to a plank, and every inch of available thought was dedicated to generating an escape plan. _Needs to be done not on a day when I've seen Wesker. I know he's here those days. If only I knew what he did, if he went anywhere..._ She figured that he must. Sitting in one spot and doing lab-rat work wasn't on the list of Wesker's things to do. He needed productivity, needed purpose... _What was it he was looking for? Documents about...evolution..._ Viral evolution, of that much she'd bet every penny in her frozen bank account. A virus needs to adapt to survive, and natural selection takes care of the rest. _A new virus._ Jill shivered at the thought, getting to her feet and jogging in place, breathing short and clipped, brows drawn together. _Harder, better, faster, stronger._ Those stupid lyrics floated through her mind and she found herself desperately missing her workout playlists. _Wow, that's possibly the most normal thought I've had in almost four months._

Jill came to an abrupt halt, chest heaving and sweat trickling down her spine as she realized how long it had been. Four months. At the least, she'd been away from Chris and the BSAA for four months. _Remember protocol? Missing units are considered dead by three._ Dead. Jill Valentine had been declared legally dead in the real world. In the world where Chris still lived. Suddenly she was crying. It was uncontrollable in how rapidly the tears had formed, and the force of the crying made her fall to her knees and wrap her arms around herself. Clasping a hand over her mouth, the last thing she wanted was for Wesker to hear or see her like this. Shoulders shaking, she covered her face with her hands and let it out. The tears poured freely down her cheeks with her muffled sobs as an image of Chris came to mind for what felt like the first time in forever. She'd thought about the BSAA, and of escaping and seeing Chris, wondering what he'd be doing but now she saw with unsettling clarity Chris in a new suit and standing at her grave. Chris having to thank everyone who came, to deal with all those people who would by now, and with perfectly understandably, truly believe her dead. _Oh god, Chris, I'm sorry..._

Sniffling and wiping at her face, Jill wrapped her arms around her knees and drew shaky, steadying breaths. Crying had always made her feel tired, but now it filled her with a renewed sense of determination to escape. Biting her lip, she cleared her throat and sniffed the rest of the tears away, drawing her brows together and staring hard up at that ticking clock. There was no reason to cry over Chris, she was going to get back to him. She _could_ get back to him, she just hadn't yet figured out how. _It's a big facility, there's more than one way in and out. All you need to do is..._

The sound of the door opening jolted her to her senses, and she jumped up to her feet, wiping her nose and sniffling again. Polina stood in the doorway and gestured Jill to go outside. _Shower time._ But as soon as the door closed behind her, Jill was handed a towel. Confused, she looked up at the woman.

"You know way. Fresh things in bathroom." Her tone was clipped like usual, but Jill noticed the man with the gun wasn't with her today. Frowning she opened her mouth to ask why she was suddenly being trusted to go on her own but Polina held up a hand. "Fifteen minute only. I come to collect you. No funny business, or else loss of privilege."

Nodding, Jill walked tentatively off to the bathroom, half expecting Wesker to ambush her at any time. Eyeing the cameras along the ceiling that were small but noticeable, Jill's mind was racing. _Trust that I won't run away...this is good._ Maybe not. This did not mean that he trusted Jill enough that he didn't think she'd run away. This meant he felt secure enough with the facility that she couldn't successfully do it. Entering the bathroom, Jill saw the usual pile of refreshed bottles, along with a big towel and...a razor. Spying this first, she was deeply confused, but shook her head, checking her appearance in the mirror. _I guess he figured what I can do with a razor, I can do with a broken piece of mirror glass._ Leaning in to turn on the hot water, Jill peeled her clothes off and let her eyes wander. Above her was the vent that sucked up the hot air, it's steady humming a comfort. But around the vent, something she hadn't really noticed before, was what looked like a panel.

Getting under the water, Jill rinsed her hair and ran the soap over her body, the razor making her skin smooth for the first time in months. Her mind, however, was not on these simple vanities. It was on the panel around the vent. _Probably screwed on. Probably doesn't move. Probably just a maintenance pocket for the fan._ But that perfectly cut square hovered in her mind. _But that vent takes the air out, which means there's probably ducts...maybe big enough..._ Turning the water off, Jill wrapped the towel around her, fluffing her hair with it and staring up. _Gotta try, gotta see._ Throwing a furtive glance at the doorway as she dressed, she stood with shaky breath and pondered the square.

The ceiling was too high to reach on her own, but she didn't need to get up there, she just had to see if it would move...

"Valentine! Two minute!" Jumping at the sound of the voice, she called out that she was just getting dressed and turned back to the ceiling. Thinking fast, she took the shampoo bottle and moved to the counter. Hoisting herself up, Jill leaned out over the floor, stretching towards the panel and gripping the wall for support. _Just...need to see...gotta make sure it doesn't..._ Poking it with the tip of the bottle, it didn't budge and she felt a wave of disappointment. _Well, so much for..._ But her hand slipped and she had to jump off the counter so she didn't fall. In doing so, the bottle jolted against the panel slightly.

And it moved. A small lift; up then down.

"What are you doing? Let's go!" Polina strode into the doorway and gave Jill a stern look. Offering a flustered apology, she piled everything into her arms before slipping past the woman and walking hurriedly back to her room, a smile fighting not to form on her features.

_I just found my escape route._

_I am going to get out of here. Once and for all._


End file.
